Customers flock to Devon shop.
Abbott's opening of a new shop in Seaton, Devon was hailed a great success by partner in the business, Chris Abbott.

The shop, which opened on April 30, after months of fevered preparation by the family-run, and family-owned, business had customers waiting outside its doors prior to its unveiling.

The opening day was a particularly local affair with the owners laying on food and drink for visitors, and supporting it with promotional activity in-store, and with advertising in Devon newspapers.

"It has beaten our expectations," partner Chris Abbott told diyweek.net.

"We offered customers a slice of opening day cake and a glass of non-alcoholic fruit punch. We also had very good opening offers, and will run a free draw until the end of May, both of which are proving to be very successful."

The retail sales area of the new shop is 1,000 sq feet, which was thanks to the considerable efforts of the family – they laid all 1,000 floor tiles themselves! – and offers core ranges similar to that in Abbotts' first shop in Ottery St. Mary: diy, housewares, paint, gardening, and kitchenware.

However, as it is a quarter of the size of the Ottery shop, Abbott's has cut back on slow moving lines, and taken advantage of its position as a seasonally-led shop.

"With the help of epos, we could easily determine this rather than looking at how much dust a product has," Chris Abbott explained.

And, although Seaton is limited in terms of stock lines, customers will find that Abbott's will go that extra mile to search out products they enquire about: "We can have anything from our Ottery branch there the following day – we all all live in Ottery and need to commute to Seaton every day," Chris Abbott added.

The expansion to a Seaton branch has helped the owners offer a considerably different product line-up to that at Ottery, and the intention is to build upon that as the months roll on.

"It's the case of so far, so good," Chris Abbott said, "but time will tell as it is still very early days. That said, we are very pleased with it and I think the new store has great potential."