Wow what a strange year.
2020 started pretty much the same as another year, relaxed and full bellied. Then it quickly turned into a lottery of isolations, lock downs, redundancies, and closures.
Being a small family run business we have been able to adapt very quickly to changes in working restrictions and evolve to suit our customers needs. When lockdown 1,0 was enforced closing all our trade shoe shops in London we lost a third of our work overnight. So ever adaptable we used the closure time to rebuild our retail space increasing the space from 6sq mtr to 25sq mtr. This has enabled customers to adhere to the newly introduced 2mtr rule, and given us extra retail space to offer a wider array of footwear related products like shoe trees, renovating creams ect.
With the new shop gleaming and ready to serve the public as soon as were the lockdown restrictions were lifted, we still had a few weeks of time left. Not one for idle hands or minds we took the decision to increase the services we can now offer to the local trade. we invested heavily in locksmith services including a very professional selection of keys, we now sell house keys, car keys including immobilizer programming, replacement door locks barrels and shackles, electronic key fobs, padlocks, chains and other essential items relieving us from future non essential closures.
We also added Engraving to our arsenal of services, prompted by the closure of a local retailer. We are now able to engrave on Glass, Wood, Metal and all plastics. We also stock trophies and other engravable gifts, with such a large retail space to fill it just made scene and looks great.
Even after all this work and training we still had time left so myself and the lads all had a day fishing to recharge our batteries.
Next on our list of improvements was the factory, cleaning and painting everything from walls to finishing machines. This was definitely not as easy as rebuilding our shop, some of these machines are close to a ton in weight and very dusty. These machines have all had a hard life working non stop since being installed 5years ago.
14th of June was the day we have been waiting for and it was finally here, doors open and trading again. Time to show off all our hard work, Customer feedback has been amazing and we appreciate the new shop local mentality.
Skip to lockdown 2.0 and we remained open servicing our local trade and postal customers with our free post service working amazingly. We are hopping as time goes on we will be able to resume our London collection services, we already have several new businesses waiting for our vans.
The Covid pandemic has been tough for everyone, it has however enabled people to slow down and focus on family over work. As time goes on i hope this great nation will rebuild like a forest after a fire with new businesses emerging from once boarded up shops and high streets once again blooming into life.
We would all love to wish you a happy and healthy Christmas and hope to see you all in the New year.
Stay healthy, Shop local and drag your feet.
