A shop that opened as a DIY store before transforming into a labyrinth of art supplies, antiques and picture frames is celebrating its 50th birthday.
Wrights of Norfolk, on Stanley Street in Great Yarmouth, opened in April 1973.
The company was established by Derek Wright, a carpenter and joiner who had bought the site in the 1950s.
With the help of his son, Gary, and friends who were all builders - and who charged him nothing for the work - he built the shop on a shoestring budget in 1972.
The following year, on opening the business, the family tapped into their existing stocks of wood screws, nails and door handles to fill the shelves.
But nothing stands still, and gradually the door handles and hinges made way for brushes and pencils, the household paints for oil and acrylic and picture frame mouldings replaced timber.
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Marie Wright, 41, granddaughter of Derek, says: "A lot of my grandfather's friends were artists and they would come in and ask him to make frames for them."
But manufacturing frames was hard work by hand, and Mr Wright eventually bought a machine and went into framing full-time.
As a natural extension of that work, the shop started selling art supplies.
"A lot of businesses evolve. It was a natural thing," Ms Wright says.
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Her grandad is now 93-years-old and occasionally comes in to help out. His wife, Joan Wright, died a year and a half ago at the age of 87. Their son, Gary, 67, works part-time.
Marie, meanwhile, has worked in the shop for more than 25 years.
"Fifty years is a long time for any business to keep going anymore," she says.
"It's the customers who have got us through the last 50 years.
"The people are lovely, the customers we've had over the years. You get people coming in and some become friends."
To mark the anniversary, the shop has been giving the first 50 customers, since last Saturday, April 15, a thank-you pack.
"That's just to show our appreciation," Ms Wright says.
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Another example of the shop's willingness to evolve was in 2019 when Ms Wright and her sister Louise introduced eco-friendly goods and a refill station for washing-up liquid, detergent and other cleaning products.
"It's something I've always been interested in myself. To find sustainable cleaning products you would have to go to Norwich or Beccles," Ms Wright says.
That side of the business has gradually expanded over the last three years.
Over the last half century, the shop has seen off recessions, the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
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"The pandemic has unsettled people greatly," Ms Wright says. "For some, it brought them to art. Others who had always had art, the opposite happened. For some of them, to this day they can't pick up a paintbrush because they're not in the right frame of mind."
The shop's most significant battle, perhaps, is with the goliaths of online retail.
"Amazon is just a dirty word, really," Ms Wright says. "It's a big problem for all businesses. So many places online chop prices down so much that independent businesses cannot compete with the prices.
"I don't know how Amazon do it.
"They sell for less than I can buy for. I can't compete with that," she says.
In that context, the shop's future plans are simple.
"To survive," Ms Wright says. "We hope to be here in five years, in ten years, but we can't see the future so who knows."
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