A Harleston trader is preparing to relocate for the second time in a month after her business was hit by a major high street blaze.The Kids Wear clothes shop was one of three stores affected after fire ripped through a row of first floor flats in the Thoroughfare last month.
A HARLESTON trader is preparing to relocate for the second time in a month after her business was hit by a major high street blaze.
The Kids Wear clothes shop was one of three stores affected after fire ripped through a row of first floor flats in the Thoroughfare last month.
Now shopkeeper Donna Mayes is looking forward to returning to the high street after all of her stock was ruined by the blaze on July 6.
The mother-of-two had reopened her business in an empty shop in Broad Street with Judith Balls, owner of the Kids Stuff shop, - ten days after the Harleston fire.
But the 26-year-old will be opening Kids Wear in a redundant shop in the Thoroughfare tomorrow after going solo again.
Miss Mayes, who started her business last November with the assistance of the Prince's Trust, said she will be moving all her stock a few hundred metres today to get more shop space. She said the second relocation would enable her to stock a larger range of children's clothes.
'I need to speculate and get more room. We lost so much space going from two shops to one. It was just too small and it was never going to earn enough.'
'I know when I go in on Friday that I will permanently stay there and I am not considering going back to the old one. I can not keep moving about and it seems like it will take a long time before it is all sorted,' she said.
Miss Mayes, of Eye, has also been nominated for a regional Flying Start achievement award by the Prince's Trust after setting up her own business, despite leaving school at 13 with no qualifications.
The fire, which closed Kids Wear, Kids Stuff, and the Harleston Turf bookmakers last month, is being treated as suspicious and is being investigated by detectives at Thetford CID.
Kids Stuff will continue in its current location in Broad Street.
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