Lock down blues (and whites).

On the 23rd March the Prime Minister announced that all non-essential shops would have to close. Obviously our first reaction was to open a bottle of wine and then we realised that we had to see this as the opportunity we had been waiting for to refresh and renew the shop.

We were lucky that the weather was kind to us and in less than two weeks the shop front had been transformed from dull and dreary cream to a fresh and vibrant blue and white.

Inside the paint brushes have also been hard at work with the same blue and white colour scheme being used.  The old shop lighting was replaced with new (and more) spotlights and the display areas were revamped.

Now that we are open again, we do take great pleasure in regularly being asked "Are you new?" or hearing somebody passing by say "Oh look, what a lovely new shop".

Of course the initial 3 week lock down period was extended.  This proved to be something of a blessed relief when we discover that the till system on the computer had failed and deleted all of our stock (don't you just love technology!).  It took quite some time to re-enter more than 1,000 different products.

More pleasurably we were able to use the time to follow up with the suppliers of products that we had seen before the pandemic struck and we had earmarked to stock in the future.  While some were new products from suppliers we had dealt with for many years there were also companies that we had not dealt with before. So when we were able to re-open in June we had lots of lovely new stock on the shelves.

Although the opportunities to get out and find new products are now limited we still have other items in the pipeline.  We are hopeful that later this month we will be able to add a very different type of product.  Once we have the piece of paper we are waiting for we will be able to go ahead.