A shop owner who has moved 12,000 plants through her two-bedroom bungalow since lockdown began has said her online business is booming.
Kerri Notman, 29, decided to close her plant and gift shop in Norwich a day before the coronavirus lockdown was officially announced.
She said she felt it was safer for customers and her family to run a delivery operation from her home near Mattishall in Norfolk. Since making the move to online, orders have tripled.
Kerri, who lives with her partner Byron and one-year-old daughter Maggie, has been filling their house, garage, drive and caravan with around 300 species of plant.
‘The sales coming through are absolutely ridiculous,’ says Kerri.
‘We’re doing 200 to 300 plants easily per day. We’ve got 30 or 40 parcels going out locally with my partner and my sister every day.
‘I think everyone’s just sitting at home bored and they want to buy more stuff, they want to make their houses look good and with all the shops closed they’re spending their money online.’
Kerri says she was hoping to have a greenhouse delivered to help store the plants, but the order was cancelled because of lockdown restrictions.
‘If we had that then we could have stored the stuff in there but because we don’t have that I’ve literally got it everywhere in my house – my caravan is full of plants,’ she says.
‘It’s only a two-bedroom bungalow, it’s a tiny little bungalow, nothing massive, hence why everything’s pretty much everywhere. It’s ridiculous.
‘My kitchen is floor to ceiling with boxes waiting to be collected.’
12,000 plants have come through Kerri’s bungalow since lockdown began, 4,000 in the last week and there are up to 3,000 pots at any one time.
‘I like it, it’s quite nice, but at the same time we’ve got all this time at home when we could probably be decorating,’ explains Kerri.
‘We’ve recently just moved in here but we actually can’t (decorate) as there are plants everywhere.’
Lets hope the orders keep coming in.
At least Kerri now has the perfect backdrop for her Instagram pictures.
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