When Dundee retailer Sandy Sarwar expanded his business with the acquisition of a store in the village of Alyth he could never have imagined the devastating flood that nearly ruined his business, or the reaction of a local community he had only just begun to know.
by Kevin Scott
If you switched on the TV after another hard day’s work on 17th July this year you may have seen Sandy Sarwar’s Premier store on the news. This was no celebratory story though. Sandy’s store had been subject to a devastating flood after the burn which runs through Alyth in Perthshire (and right past Sandy’s shop) burst its banks during sustained heavy rainfall.
Outside the store cars were literally piled on top of one another after the force of the water caused catastrophic damage to the village. Sandy himself became trapped in his store, and after four hours in the office upstairs he was rescued by the fire brigade, who had marched through waist-high water to gain access to the shop.
To make matters even worse, Sandy had only been trading at the store for three weeks before the flood. And yet despite being a newcomer to the village, the local community rallied around Sandy and other businesses that had been damaged. That assistance, along with a gritted determination and lots of hard work, Sandy was able to reopen just seven weeks later.
“The entire episode was just horrendous,” says Sandy from the dry comfort of his new-look store. “You can’t imagine something like that happening at any time, but for it to happen so soon after we’d opened was horrendous.”
Sandy isn’t new to retail. He owns two stores in Dundee, having sold one to fund the purchase of the Alyth store. Spar retailer Paul Duncan was in the market to sell, and the store fit the bill for Sandy. “I was looking for a store out of the city, and when I heard this shop was available I visited and found it ticked all the boxes,” says Sandy.
Already working with Booker, Sandy decided to convert the store from a Spar, so having taken the keys on the 6th June the store closed and reopened as a Premier on the 12th.
Former owner Paul Duncan was retained, an inspired move by Sandy given Paul’s local knowledge and his relationship with the shoppers – Paul himself was only too happy to take some shifts on.
Trading began in the new-look store and all was going well until that fateful morning on 17th July. “It had been raining pretty heavy,” says Sandy. “A customer came in and said the burn was beginning to get precariously high, but to be honest we all dismissed it; we even had a laugh about getting hold of sandbags.”
This wasn’t the folly of a newcomer to the town either. “The whole time I owned the store the water never came close to overflowing,” says Paul, who happened to be out making deliveries when the flood hit.
“We genuinely thought it would be okay,” adds Sandy. Within minutes the water had started leaking into the store and a minute afterwards Sandy couldn’t even close the door for the force of the water.
Sensing the imminent danger, Sandy retreated to the office upstairs, along with staff member Anne. They remained in the office for four hours, until the fire brigade arrived.
“We waded through the shop on the way out, with the water up to our thighs,” says Sandy.
The recovery process
After returning home to, in his own words, compose himself, Sandy returned to the shop to take in the damage. “The water had receded a bit but the shop was a complete state. Shelves had collapsed, stock was underwater, even the computer was underwater.”
Soon however, Sandy would witness first-hand the community spirit that drives Alyth, and helped the village recover after the flood. Sandy’s first thought was whether his business had gone underwater for good.
He visited to town hall to ask for a loan of a Roller Squeegee to get the last of the water from his store, and was soon joined by a team of volunteers who helped clear away all the damaged stock. Such community spirit is inspiring, and it certainly made Sandy feel as though he may be able to get through it.
With a dry, but empty store, all Sandy could do was wait for the go-ahead from the insurance company to start rebuilding.
“Given I hadn’t been open for long I was worried that I would be completely forgotten about, so I managed to keep my newspaper deliveries on the go; we missed just one day,” says Sandy. “We also continued to sell papers in the shop.”
Just eight days after the flood, using some crates to make a plinth, Sandy laid out the newspapers and offered to make a coffee for anyone who came in to make a purchase. That practice continued until the work began – and the coffee-making has become something of a ritual with regulars.
When the insurance company told Sandy to forget about reopening before Christmas, he decided such a timeframe just wasn’t acceptable and so set to work. “The insurance company couldn’t believe how quickly we turned things around. The builders were great and Premier offered us huge support.”
In the end, the store reopened just seven weeks after the flood. It’s an incredible turnaround and a true testament to Sandy’s commitment. Looking at the store today and you’d never know that anything had gone awry – though work continues outside on repairing the retaining wall that separates the burn from the road.
To say the shop is on the road to recovery would be to miss the point. The shop has recovered – more or less literally; there is still some minor work to be gone in the back office, but on the shop floor it is bright, well-laid out with a great range.
Sandy believes the ordeal has brought him and the community closer together and he’s positive about both the response to the flood, and the way in which he’s turned the store around. “I’ve been in retail my whole life and I know that if you’re a good retailer people will help you when you need help. We’ve got a good reputation and that goes a long way.”
He’s also more positive about the future than ever before.
“I think the business is on its way back to being where it was,” he says. “I’ll hopefully never have to go through anything like that again, but we’ve got through, we’ve recovered and hopefully I can now repay the community for the help they gave me since the flood.”
