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What is
Time Out Shop?
A magazine that tells you where to eat is now selling you body wash. That's a fair thing to be suspicious about, so here's the honest answer.
- Time Out has spent since the swinging '60s doing one job: knowing cities from the inside and saying so plainly.
- The shop is that same job, in the shape of things you can use.
- It's for people who live in cities, not people visiting one.
- Three things so far: what you wash with, what you carry, what you put on your hands.
- We'll tell you what each one can't do. That's the part most shops leave out.
Let's take the suspicion seriously, because it's usually right. Most of the time a magazine's name on a physical thing means somebody sold a logo and walked away.
Here's what happened instead.
The job never changed
Time Out started as a folded sheet of paper telling Londoners what was on that week. Not what was famous — what was on, and whether it was any good.
That's the whole job, and it hasn't moved since. Know a city from the inside. Say what's worth your evening. Say what isn't, which is the harder half.
The thing people miss is that it was never a tourist guide. Tourists want the top ten. Locals want to know which of the two places on their own street is better on a Tuesday. Those are different questions, and Time Out has always answered the second one.
So why sell things?
Because the city doesn't only decide where you eat. It decides what your bathroom looks like, what survives your commute, and how much you can carry up three flights without stopping.
Nobody was doing that job for objects. Plenty of shops sell things that are lovely on a table in a photograph. Very few are designed by someone who has actually stood in a shared bathroom at 7am holding four bottles.
We're not a magazine that started selling things. We're the same job, in a shape you can use.
Who it's for
Somebody whose life happens in a city. Which usually means a flat smaller than they'd like, a bathroom shared or barely private, a commute that takes something out of them, and a move coming up in the next eighteen months.
That person has taste and no space. They can tell good from expensive. They've been sold to enough times to spot it happening, and they'll leave the moment they feel it.
So we won't do it. No countdowns, no invented scarcity, no adjectives standing in for facts.
What we make
Three things so far, and each exists because the city breaks something.
What you wash with. City bathrooms have no shelf and city days end at different temperatures. So: one size, three formulas, in a pouch that shrinks as you use it and travels when you do.
What you carry. Made with RAWROW, who have been building carriers in Seoul long enough to know what a full one feels like on the fourth flight of stairs.
What you put on your hands. Six cities, six scents, each one built from a moment a local would recognise and a visitor would walk straight past.
What we won't do
We'll tell you what a thing can't do. The pouches are 350ml, which is well over the cabin liquid limit — they go in a checked bag or they stay home. We could have made a small one and called it travel-friendly. Then you'd own two sizes and a bottle that runs out in ten days.
We won't put a city's name on something unrelated to the city. If London is on it, something about it is London.
We won't rush you. Nothing here expires at midnight.
The questions we get
Is Time Out Shop for tourists?
No. It's built for people who live in cities — the storage, the commute, the moving, the shared bathroom. A visitor is welcome, but nothing here is designed around a two-week trip.
What does Time Out Shop sell?
Body care in 350ml pouches, carriers and trunks made with RAWROW, and hand cream in six city scents.
Where do you ship?
Shipping destinations and times are listed at checkout, and on the delivery page.
Can I take the body care on a plane?
Not in hand luggage. At 350ml each pouch is over the 100ml cabin limit and needs to go in checked baggage.
Who writes The Guide?
The Time Out Shop team. Every claim we make about how something works is either sourced, measurable, or stated as an opinion.
Everything here started with something the city broke. That's the only brief there is.
note: One email when the next guide lands. Nothing else, ever.
Follow @shopbytimeout for more like this.