Just a quick word about our decision to close our smaller shop in Marlborough on Christmas Eve.
We felt that, whilst Newbury continued to trade very strongly throughout the latter half of 2011, supported by a hard core of loyal customers and further enhanced by the opening of Parkway in October, Marlborough was struggling to match the results of 2010. We were spending a disproportionate time between us in the Marlborough shop and felt that there was a longer term danger that Newbury would suffer as a result.
We are blessed to have such fantastic full time support from Tania in Newbury, but Allanah needed to spend more time there in order to update and maintain the high standards of visual presentation and "Wow" factor that we believe gives us an edge in such a competitive retail market. Rob was struggling also to manage all of the administration workload as well as devoting the necessary time to develop our website offer.
The decision to close Marlborough, whilst sad, was a straightforward commercial one, and we could not afford to allow sentiment or ego to cloud our judgement. We can now concentrate our efforts on building upon the fantastic customer loyalty in Newbury, whilst reaching out to a wider audience via an enhanced website. We also feel confident that our regular customers in Marlborough will not see the 18 mile distance as an impediment to visiting us in Newbury.
