November 2026
Huge News! Celebrating 5 years on Itchen Street by expanding!
This has been a very long time coming; the week we first opened inc on Itchen Street back in 2021, we felt we'd already run out of space. Our vision was to bring life and light to what was otherwise a dark building which was not regularly accessed by the public. Itchen Street is a beautiful location which bridges both the Main Street, and The Victorian Precinct, and we have cherished every day working from, and welcoming the public into our beautiful exisiting space.
The adjoining two spaces, numbers 2 and 4 Itchen Street (to the East Side of our store) became available earlier this year and we have since undertaken a major project liaising with local trades to refresh the space in preparation for fitting it out for our much anticipated expanded store, all while remaining open 7 days a week for regular inc trade.
This feels like an almighty achievement when we witness the opposite happening in Brick & Mortar stores worldwide, particularly in small towns such as ours. We are immensely proud to grow in this way.
The expansion has been both beautifully and horrendously timed. Serendipitous that we've managed to sync our opening date of 18 Nov; exactly 5 years since our 2021 launch event on Itchen Street! Though, to remain open 7 days a week while liaising with tradies, renovating, fitting-out and sourcing stock, and recruiting and training staff for two entirely new extra spaces during our peak season is proving insane. You'll forgive us for not having a single moment to share this momentous news, or the process of our improvements and expansion. Some images below....
When we say we; we are a husband and wife team, Helen Riley-Duddin and Michael Duddin with 5 children aged 17, 12, 9, 7 and 4, this is very much an independently locally owned small family business. We have a small team of exceptional staff who we have trained and trust to represent us and our designers and support us in all the ways while we both endeavour to grow the business and raise our children. We feel a huge sense of gratitude to our community who both support the store, and provide a safe, supportive and enriching atmosphere to raise a family. To this affect, we regularly support local community fundraisers as we strongly believe in contributing back to the vitality of our region, and maintaining strong networks of caring people.
As complete perfectionists, the space, the launch, the concept is a little incomplete given the challenging timing, so we endeavour to tweak as we go, and as we grow. Every time you visit you'll notice changes - though that's part of our daily promise to keep our offering fresh for regulars!
A major detail of an adjoining internal door between our existing and new stores will happen in phase 2; we're aiming for winter 2027 as the costs, planning, logistics and disruption to business are far too great for this small business to bear just now. So we'll gladly accompany you between inc new and old via the pathway to give you a friendly and personalised visit through our 4 main showcase spaces.
Until this renovation we have existed for 5 years with no staff room, dedicated administration nor storage space! It's been a real creative struggle! Part of this expansion will give our team this much needed space in the rear room at number 6; which is currently serving as a showcase space, administration, staff room, online dispatch, storage, photography studio and flower processing station. This back room will become closed to the public from the time of launch of our new spaces at 2 and 4 Itchen Street.
We welcome you all to visit our new spaces, to meet us, to learn more of our story, to see first-hand the love and care we each invest into every aspect of our business product and service offering, to experience our beautiful building and vista on Itchen Street.
Soft launch opening hours Victorian Heritage Weekend Sat & Sun 14 & 15 Nov 10-4pm.
Opening Launch Event 18 November 2026 4-8pm.
Serendipitously, this date is exactly 5 years since we first opened on Itchen Street, to the day!
We adore this early Victorian picture of our streetscape. Inc remains in the same location, only bigger!