Interiors company leaves city - and goes back to its roots in Unthank Road
Paula Gundry (inset) on leaving her site in the city centre - Credit: Archant
An interior designer has left the city centre and headed back to her roots in Norwich's Golden Triangle.
Paula Gundry's Interior Designs originally opened in 2009 in Unthank Road but moved into the Westlegate Tower around six years ago in pursuit of a more central spot.
And now the company's namesake has gone full-circle, with Ms Gundry relocating her main showroom back to the place it all began and putting her former first-floor Westlegate premises up for let.
She said: "We've been operating exclusively out of our store in Unthank Road for a couple of months now after refurbishing it and turning it into our main showroom.
"We took over the old TSB Bank, and for a while used the building as a marketing tool and a client project space.
"But now we have re-opened it as a brand new showroom focusing on our beautiful kitchen cabinetry. We've invested a couple hundred thousand in it and it's all looking very swanky."
Ms Gundry said logistics were behind the reason for the move.
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She explained: "This new showroom has parking for a start, and we have shop floor windows with lots of space to display what we have to offer.
"We're also on one of the nicest and most famous roads Norwich has.
"As lovely as our old place was, there's comes a point in the lease where you decide whether or not to stay for another five years.
"We really wanted to expand our kitchen and cabinetry range and it's hard to do that on the first floor of a property because there's not particularly good access.
"More than anything, we needed to be on the ground floor. The Unthank building was the perfect place to do it.
"We made the commitment to move during the pandemic, and it's going great."
Twelve years after Ms Gundry began her interior design company, she said the business has only gone from "strength to strength".
She added: "It's been crazily busy the last couple of months.
"We are up 100pc on what we were trading last year.
"I'm incredibly proud to say we are one of the region's good news stories to come out of the pandemic."