Greenwoods DIY

Lockdown Update: Greenwood's DIY

It’s been a mad few weeks. Our daily lives have changed, we miss seeing the friendly faces behind our favourite independents. We are sure you do too, so we thought we’d check in.

Not only have they had to adapt their own lifestyle to the new normal, their business has had to change too.

We caught up with Nic Greenwood from Greenwood’s DIY who until a month ago ran a normal old fashioned Hardware shop in Woodseats. 

What was your initial reaction to lockdown?

Our customers. Most of them are elderly and vulnerable. But some of our regular older customers would not stop coming into the shop even though we told them we would deliver to them! So we decided to close the shop to make it delivery only to support the government and try and keep our customers at home.

How has your business changed over the past few weeks?

Changed Completely! We’ve gone from never selling anything online or taking orders online to relying on online! What a learning curve these last 2 weeks have been. We are a traditional old fashioned shop so we were not geared up for a sudden change to delivery only at all. We only delivered to a few older customers and that was only the heavy items and done ad hoc and informal, nothing written down either just in my head. 

How do you see the long-tern impact on small businesses?

Devastating. Our neighbours are a card shop, clothes shops, hairdressers and jewellery shops so are all closed. I can see many shops down Woodseats are going to suffer. 

What has been your daily coping strategy in these crazy times?

Laugh or you will cry! The shop is now a dark messy depot and will need a massive redesign and cleanup after all this. We have brilliant family and friends who have supported us and helped us with promotion, websites, Facebook, email and deliveries. We are stopping for the whole Easter weekend to just have a rest. 

I’m so glad we bought a new (to us) van 2 months ago. It’s been a godsend! 

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