After opening her first shop only weeks before the start of the recession in 2007, a Bungay florist is celebrating the opening of a new shop in the town centre.
Sharon Gittings, who owns Amor’s Florist which has just moved into the old Norwich and Peterborough Building Society building on Market Place, said the move is a big risk but one she is already sure will come off.
Everpresent at Bungay markets, Miss Gittings said people are already saying the shop has improved the centre of the town after it opened for business on Monday.
She said: “I just love it here. I was in the old shop for 11 years and I was thinking of giving up being where I was but then this came up and now it is onwards and upwards, I am here to stay.
“I thought it was a big risk to take this shop but it has not been at all because since the moment I opened it has been ‘wow!’”
Miss Gittings hadn’t been long in the business before the recession hit, with it feeling like she had only been open for five minutes before the TV, radio, and newspaper headlines started talking about the credit crunch.
The recession hit business and the shop badly, with being forced with closing the doors a very real possibility.
She said: “It got very bad. In the bad times, because I am a florist, if it was summer and really hot the flowers were dying in front of me because I wasn’t selling them.
“I lost money for the first few years but I was not going to give up. I started doing Interflora which definitely helped and eventually we came out of the recession and I took a chance with this new shop.”
The businesswoman is also confident about the future of the high street despite shop closures by House of Fraser, Marks and Spencers, and Mothercare.
She said: “The big shops are struggling but I don’t think the small ones are because we are just doing it ourselves.
“It is just me and Tori here, not hundreds of employees needing paid.
“We are quite lucky because Bungay doesn’t have a great big supermarket in the middle of town like some of the bigger towns in the region like Beccles. We are mostly independent stores in town.”
Amor’s Florist is open 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to 1pm on Saturday.
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