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00:00My name's Phil, I own Pigeon Books on Albert Road in Southsea.
00:04So obviously this weekend it's kind of announced on social media that you'd be closing this shop here in Albert Road.
00:11Yeah, it's been a decision that I think we've known would be coming for a little while now.
00:17It sort of coincides with our five year lease coming up, so we opened up in, or should have opened up in March of 2020
00:27and weren't able to open up because of Covid.
00:30So it's been a bit of a struggle ever since then, but it just feels like the right time to have a bit of a refresh, a bit of a reset.
00:39Yeah, so obviously I think it was around March last year that we were here last and it was a similar story in a way in terms of you had a quiet Christmas
00:47and you were appealing for some support from the public in terms of coming in.
00:52Does it pick up after that? How has it been since then?
00:56Similar sort of situation really, so we had a relatively quiet Christmas, last Christmas period, which meant that usually we rely on Christmas
01:06to keep us going over the first few months of the year, which didn't really happen.
01:11But we had some fantastic support, we had some really good couple of months of sales since then, but then it settled back down again.
01:20And then unfortunately we had a relatively quiet Christmas again compared to previous years.
01:25But from what I understand it's been the same for a lot of businesses around here.
01:31So you've been kind of five years or so, five year lease coming up now.
01:35You do seem to have built a bit of a community in that time, a bit of following it.
01:39So this isn't the end of the business, you've just been moving to online temporarily?
01:44Absolutely, yeah. It would be a massive shame to waste the last five years and the community we've built around us
01:50and the amount of customers who have become friends as well.
01:54We've made relationships with other local businesses and we really do feel part of South Sea's independent community.
02:04So yeah, it's absolutely not the end of the business, it's just the end of this shop until we find a new home.
02:11So what are the next plans in terms of, are you looking for a new shop immediately or are you going to take stock?
02:19I think we're just going to see how the next few months play out.
02:22We're lucky that it coincides with the weather starting to get a bit better so we'll be able to go back to where we started and do markets.
02:29We've just signed up to trade at Pride in June.
02:32We will see where the flow takes us really.
02:39Obviously when the right place comes up we'll go for it but it's going to be nice knowing that we're not under any sort of pressure
02:47and we can just see how things pan out.
02:50It's going to be very bittersweet to lose the shop here.
02:53We've built up a real home here and people know where we are but we want to do it on our terms.
03:02It's a good time to move on when we can rather than decide to take on a new lease and then realise that we can't afford to stay here.
03:13So it feels like a nice point to put a comma in there rather than a full stop.
03:19I've got a question which makes it sound like you're closing.
03:22Obviously you're not, it's still going on but have you got any message to encourage your customers and to the community?
03:28We're so grateful for all the support we've had since putting the announcement out at the weekend.
03:34We've had some incredible messages of support and the people were so keen to follow us in whatever happens next.
03:41So I can only reiterate the fact that we're not going anywhere.
03:46The business is still going, we're just not going to be here anymore.
03:50Hopefully people continue to support us as much as they have up until now.