Q&A: House of Reeves co-owner Trevor Reeves

Retail Week: It is a year on from the riots, how are you feeling?

Trevor Reeves: I feel exhausted. It’s been a year of learning.

You sit there and think it’s a business that has been there for 150 years [and has been destroyed]. Where’s the rule book? What do you do?

We went from not having a clue to dealing with the media, the insurance claim and remodelling the business at the same time.

What were your first steps?

As a retailer our first thought was for the January sales, particularly because when the riots happened trade had only just started to pick up because of it being August and the kids were off for the summer.

Getting the insurance claim done was okay but the problem was finding trading space for Christmas.

We took stock over to the other store across the road and rearrange it all and take more storage space from the trading space.

Will you reopen the destroyed store?

The damaged site is just starting to get weeds on it now. We don’t own the whole site, just half and those other owner does not want to engage in conversation over a new store.

To reopen it would take two to three years anyway because the store is located in the conservation area.

We wouldn’t open a second store now. It’s not the right retail climate to open a new one.

How is the business trading?

It is an austerity market and we’re in the same position as everyone else. So we need to make sure we operate well and then we’ll be able to take advantage of the upturn when it comes.

We are 60% smaller than before because we lost three floors at 6-7,000 sq ft. We’re still profitable though and everything is on an even keel.

How has Croydon changed since the riots?

Since the riots we’ve had a burglary, we’ve had the lead stolen from the roof and the aluminium boards we put up showing the history of Croydon has been graffittied on, so it seems we are not out of the mire of the socio-economic state yet.

The riots have stuck with people. It does seem that there is more tolerance and more respect for each other, you can see it in store. I think people were deeply embarrassed that we had behaved that way.

I think the police have learnt their lesson. There is still a long way to go and there still needs to be police on the ground but the whole police hierarchy have learned a very big lesson that you can’t sit on your backside and take things for granted.

Recovery money pledged by the Government is going into infrastructure and when we know what is going on with the Whitgift Centre that will help. These changes to the public realm will happen across the next 6-18 months.

This place needs to be much better than it is and I hope the powers that be can do it.