It's been a challenging year for retailers, big and small.

Unfortunately, we have not escaped those same challenges.

Sales and profits are both down!

We've tried all sorts of different things to improve things, but nothing is working, or at least nothing has been working quick enough.

Which has meant we've had to make some quite radical decisions.

It's with huge regret that we have had to let our team go this week, which is pretty crap.

November will be Keely, Dylan, and Holly's last month with us.

It's definitely not what I thought we would be doing, when we were planning the year out, 11 months ago, and it's been a really, really hard decision to make.

The hardest I've ever had to make as a business owner and they've been amazing throughout.

Their day-to-day-contribution, in trying to help us avoid redundancy and also in how they've taken the news.
I wanted to write this post to address any issues that might arise off the back of these decisions.

Are you still going to get your stuff?

Yes. We're still shipping orders.

We are not closing down.

We've had to make this difficult decision to stop that from happening!

We are definitely not closing down.

Mum, Dad and I will continue doing what we've been doing.

The shop will remain open, and you can, of course, still shop on our website.

If you want the bunker items, then we've got the eBay shop as well.

What changes are coming?

We will be making some amendments to our shop opening times in January.

It might not be possible for us to keep the shop open long-term.

Once we are back after the Christmas break in January, we will be closed to the public Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

The shop will be open from 9:30 to 5:00 Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and 9:30 till 1:00 on a Saturday.

Just to reiterate, we're closing on a Tuesday from January.

That means the shop will be closed from 1:00 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon right through to 9:30 on a Wednesday morning.

We've made the decision to close the shop on a Tuesday to give us much needed time to process orders from the weekend, to continue to make our shelters and to do all the kind of administration stuff that comes with running a company.

How are these changes going to affect you?

Things might take us a little bit longer.

We're going to be down three team members, but still, try to do the volume of work, and more hopefully, between those left.

That might mean it takes us a little longer to reply to messages and emails.

We might not get to the phone for some particular reason, so if you do phone, please leave a message.

We will get back to you, I promise.

What about shipping orders?

It might take us a little bit longer to ship the way we have operated.

Ordinarily, if you ordered before 1:00 p.m. on a business day,  we'd aim to ship out the same day.

We might not be able to do that, so what we ask of you now is to give us a couple of days to process those orders and get them out to you.

Please just ask...

I just wanted to reiterate that we are not closing the business.

We will continue, but we are making some significant changes.

We will continue to communicate those changes over the coming weeks and months and ask you to be patient with us really.

If you're unsure or unclear about anything, then just ask a question.

Please don't make assumptions, don't listen to rumor or speculation.

Just ask us.