Excitement brewing at Northampton gift shop ahead of long-awaited reopening

The owners of a Northampton gift shop are brimming with excitement at the prospect of reopening next week.

Mooch shut in March with husband and wife owners, Rachel and Paul Roberts, worrying if the business would even survive the coronavirus lockdown.

But the St Giles Street store is now ready to welcome customers again on Tuesday - they are shutting on Sundays and Mondays for a few weeks.

"Lockdown has been like a tale of two halves with the first half thinking, 'what are we going to do, we're doomed,'" Rachel told the Chronicle & Echo.

"Then the second half was more like, 'we're going to get through this, it might be painful but we'll survive.'"

Rachel said the Government furlough and grant schemes have been a lifeline while the Mooch online store has 'kept the wolf from the door'.

But they are desperate to get back to normality by working in the shop and serving customers face-to-face, as they have been doing for three years.

"The key thing for us is to get back in front of customers as that's where we get our energy from," she said.

Mooch will be limiting customers to one on each of its two floors and has removed some of the fixtures to make more room to stay two metres apart.

Rachel hopes it will be a 'very personal and special' experience for those who come into the store, who can browse to their heart's content without any interruptions.

The limit does mean shoppers might have to queue but a new click-and-collect service has been launched to reduce that as much as possible.

Rachel said: "It's much easier to sell in a shop than online as you can see the product, particularly with our kind of products, so we're pretty excited to reopen."