Wigan couple breathe life into eyesore property with new enterprise

Claire Southern, 40, and her partner Chris Richmond, 41, from Hindley, love a restoration project even if it is a stressful and seems almost impossible.

The couple have just opened a new homeware shop called Hetty and Flo, which is named after their two daughters, Henrietta, aged 10, and Florence, aged 9, after a whole year working on the Market Street eyesore which stood derelict for 15 years.

As they first set eyes on the unloved, rotting and rat-infested property in 2021, they had a vision for its potential and a determination to restore it to its former glory.

A year later, they have transformed the hopeless looking site into a beautiful boutique homeware and lifestyle store.

The couple encountered many set-backs along the way but they did not let that stop them achieving their goal.

Claire, who has worked in retail for a number of years, from shops within the Trafford Centre to becomming an online seller, is now living her dream of opening one of her own and becoming an entrepeneur.

Chris, is a man of many talents who as an ex-marine, turned self-taught builder and electrician with a geography degree under his belt, was not fazed when taking on the humongous task at hand and navigating his way through repairing and restoring the building. They say that together they worked as a dream team.

Claire added: "We bought the premises last year and had to renovate it all.

"It was in a really bad state after being empty for about 15 years and it was infested with rats.

"It had previosly been modernised to the 2000s era but we’ve taken it back and restored its original features and character.

“We took up the laminate flooring and restored the floorboards.

"The shop front was collapsing, the wooden windowsills were completely rotten and would turn to dust to touch but we managed to keep the original glass windows.

"Chris has done all of the restoration work on it himself, there’s not a thing he hasn’t done.

“For our first customer, we had a lady who I met through the re-selling community and she travelled all the way up from Oxford just to visit our shop!

“I’m really passionate about re-using things and preventing waste so after becoming a mum, I found that the hours in my retail job just didn’t suit my lifestyle and so I became a re-seller, which I still do, on websites such as eBay and others.

“I found though that it got a bit lonely and the only person I would see in the day would be the lady behind the desk at the post office, so I’ve been really excited about running my own shop where I can work on my online business as well.

“My mum also sells some of her handmade items in our shop, called Mary’s Makes and we have items from other local independant sellers.

“We are both really passionate about Hindley and wanted to invest in the area.”