COVID-19. Our story

What a strange few months it has been. No one could have predicted how Covid-19 has shaped our world. We have been extremely fortunate that all of us and our staff have remained free from the virus but our thoughts go out to those families that have not been so fortunate.

We found ourselves in a very strange situation in March where we had shut down before the government officially ordered the lockdown. We did this to protect our staff and customers. Little did we know how long it would last. Fortunately for us, we were able to continue the website from home and both myself and Jane worked every day to keep things running as smoothly as we could. We were able to get stock delivered, put on the website and sent out by courier. We were very surprised how busy we were. In fact we were just as busy as if the shop was open. We continued with our usual Wednesday night Facebook lives from our front room and even gave away some vouchers on our quiz night. At the end of April we were starting to worry that stock would start to be an issue. Most of our items come from Italy and as you know, back then, Italy was the epicentre of the outbreak and all the factories were closed. Luckily most of our wholesalers had had the foresight and ordered plenty of stock. We were able to continue like this until the shop was allowed to reopen on the 15th June.

We decided to completely redecorate the shop, put new window graphics up, change the signs as well as put in the new social distance guidelines in ready to welcome you all back. Again we were surprised how busy our first week back was and everyone that came in said how nice it was to see us and to get out and about.

We have continued to stay busy up to now both in store and on the website and it has made us realise that even in this challenging retail environment, people do still like to go into shops and see the items alongside buying online and as long as that continues, we will continue to keep the shop open.

We would like to thank each and every one of you for your continued support during these difficult times. We really appreciate it. Ian & Jane x