A Cwmbran business is offering 15-minute slots where people with disabilities can visit and have the shop to themselves.
Mother Nature’s Goodies, an independently owned shop in the town centre that sells aromatherapy products, oils, bath products, candles and gifts opened in 2021. The plan is to help reduce stress for shoppers with extra needs in the run-up to Christmas.
Steve Tranter, the shop’s owner told Cwmbran Life: “It’s an extra service we can offer because we do find an increasing amount of customers coming in and they do have anxiety. We see that reflected in the sales of some of our products, some of the crystals that help with anxiety, some essential oils, those sort of things are on the rise. We have people come in on wheelchairs and crutches. We are laid out to be wheelchair-friendly.
“We see customers come in with headphones where they’re just shutting themselves off from the world. We’d like to invest a bit of time working out how to service those customers, do you approach them, don’t you approach them? We don’t know that but we just know we want to able to offer the ability for those customers to be on their own not stressed by people all around them. It gives those people the chance to have the shop to themselves.
“The plan at the moment is there’ll be a slot every morning, at 9.30am to 9.45am and that’ll be Monday to Friday. And then in the evenings the first slot will be 4.45pm and we’ll put as many slots on as people need.”
How to book a 15-minute slot
Steve plans to create an online booking system but to start he’s asking customers to send him an email at [email protected] with the date they would like to visit the shop. He’ll reply to confirm the date and a time slot. On the morning of the visit, he’s asking customers to send a text to confirm they are still coming.
“We have no idea how popular it will be but we’re a community-based business, you know we’re in the community so we should be trying to do things like that,’ he added.
Mother Nature’s Goodies is at 6 The Parade, Cwmbran town centre.