A SPRINGHEAD couple who turned a visionary idea into full-blown fashion statement are planning to open their second shop despite the challenges of lockdown.

Lisa and Marc Capper began their White Wall Clothing Company online in March 2019 before taking a quantum leap and completely renovating premises at Grotton One and moving in just nine months later.

However, after an extremely successful first month trading, they were hit by the lockdown.

Mother-of-three Lisa, 39, said: “With the uncertainty of the pandemic we were unsure if the business would survive.

“But we'd put so much time and effort into getting the business started we were determined to make it succeed.

“We started to post on social media significantly and we soon realised the local community were supporting us with online sales increasing dramatically.

“At the end of March last year we decided to expand the size of our shop, taking on the adjoining room to double the square footage. The additional room was ready in time for us when we came out of the first lockdown in June.

“Expanding the shop assisted us with social distancing measures when we reopened. And support we received locally from that point onwards was overwhelming.

“With distancing measures in place we had people in a queuing system and in July we decided to start to look for a second shop with Uppermill being our number one target.

"We love everything about the village and we spend our free time there.” Meanwhile, their social media following doubled to more than 6,000 and Lisa declared: “We've since been through two more lockdowns, inclusive of the current one, but we've stayed positive and we'd like to think we've kept our customers positive by giving them something to look forward to.

“We do weekly Facebook live events, were our customers can interact with us. We did our 1 year at Grotton Facebook live event on the 20/2/2021 which proved to be an overwhelming success and we plan many more community and live events moving forward when it's safe to do so.”

And she added: “Now with a lot of perseverance and commitment we've managed to secure a tenancy in The Globe, High St, Uppermill.

“We plan to open mid April all being well and we will re-open our Grotton boutique on the 12th April subject to regulations.

“Ultimately our success is down our local community and Facebook page followers. We couldn't do it without them - we had more than 1,000 positive responses when we made the announcement about the new premises.”

And the unique company name? “Marc chose it," she said. “We wanted something different and not be called boutique.

“We wanted it to resemble our family home which has crisp white crisp walls and so we chose white wall and it’s not your average boutique name.”