A BUSINESS that opened up just before the pandemic has been flourishing since expanding in the town centre and adding a unique spin to its services.
Launching a beauty and holistic treatment business on Hardshaw Street in 2020, Jamie Leicester and Gareth Furness had the unfortunate timing of starting a company just days before a global pandemic was announced.
Despite the difficulties that followed, Jamie and Gareth managed to sustain the business using their own funds and later moved to a unit on Barrow Street, which allowed them to expand their shop and services.
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Selling crystal healing products and offering treatments such as deep tissue massages and skincare services, the move also allowed the team to offer accredited beauty courses to train others in holistic healing.
With previous experience as a florist, Jamie launched a secondary business, 'Say It With Flowers', from the Barrow Street store once 'Rebalance' developed more of an established reputation in St Helens.
As Rebalance's services have expanded, Jamie said that business has been particularly positive this year, and he and Gareth hope to continue this moving forward.
Jamie said: "Things have been consistently getting better, and we are finding a lot more people seem to be supporting small businesses and shopping local at the moment.
"You can never predict what's going to happen [...] and the weather can play a big part in people coming into the town centre, but we expected to be a little quieter this year so we have been quite surprised.
"Our online presence and extra services have allowed us to get our name out more and things have been exceptionally busy with the florists recently -we completely sold out after Mother's Day and Valentine's Day."
With many businesses moving out of the Hardshaw Centre and into Church Square shopping centre in preparation of St Helens' regeneration plans, Jamie said that part of the business' boost may be from more people walking down Barrow Street instead of cutting through the closing down shopping centre.
The beauty therapist and florist agreed that it is better to have more shops in one area of town, rather than multiple spaces with empty units, but hoped that Barrow Street and other areas of the town centre are not left behind in the redevelopment.
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