91Èȱ¬

A trip down a local shopping street in the Grangetown area of Cardiff shows that many businesses are battening down the hatches and hoping to ride this recession out.

Penarth Road is a busy thoroughfare with a range of independent shops from stores selling saris and furniture to takeaways and letting shops.

There are casualties of the recession here - the boarded up shop fronts are evidence of that - but there are winners too.

Stefan Boczek is now his own boss. After seven years managing the furniture shop Treehouse, he has just taken the plunge and re-opened it after the previous owner closed it down.

"It's not a depression, it's not half the country out of work. There are still lots and lots of people out there working with good income, with disposable income, and they still need to buy furniture from somewhere."

Further down the road from Treehouse, A2Z Property Lettings and Sales is picking up business, but their good numbers hide some bad luck stories according to Yasur Tafail.

"There's been an increase in the number of tenants becoming available and the number of properties becoming available due to the fact that a lot of the people who cannot afford the mortgages have been repossessed.

"I would say 30% of our tenants now have come from that background."

Property letting is not the only industry to expand during these dire times. Whilst the white goods industry is currently floundering with job losses at Hoover and Indesit, business is booming for the cleverly named Sell Fridges.

Paul Phillips has seen his trade in re-conditioning and selling on flood and fire damaged white goods double in the month of February alone.

"We're selling quicker than we can actually repair and clean. It's an industry that does boom in a recession. We're looking for more cleaners, more engineers, delivery drivers, more staff for the shop.

"Business has been very good to me this month - fingers crossed it stays the same."

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