Alan Brown: ‘Never happier than when chatting to customers’
TRIBUTES TO SHOPKEEPER AFTER HIS DEATH AT 85
TRIBUTES have been paid to a popular Nottinghamshire shop owner who was “never happier than when chatting to customers”.
Alan Brown had helped run B Brown and Son, a domestic appliance repairs firm in Osberton Road, Retford, since the 1960s and was described as friendly and easy-going by loved ones.
Mr Brown, who died aged 85 on June 8, was suffering from various health conditions according to his son, Adrian, 52, who reopened the shop just a month after his father retired in 2018.
Adrian said: “When my dad was very young he liked his motorsports, but as he got older he was very into walking.
“He liked that sort of thing. He was an easy-going and friendly sort of chap.”
Mr Brown started to run the shop in Retford with his father, Benjamin, in the 60s.
When Alan retired, Adrian was going to take on a new role with Hoover, but had a change of heart and decided to keep his grandfather and father’s business going instead.
Adrian said: “I was always worried that I knew dad would have to retire at some point and was worried about running it on my own.
“We shut it as it seemed a good time to go somewhere else, but I missed working with the firm, the local people and didn’t like the big corporation attitude.
“For the last four years dad hasn’t been able to be in the shop anymore.
“It was life in a way for him even more than grandad and their creation. They did work at it.”
He added: “When I go to customers and tell them they say they’ve had washing machines for years from the firm and even through generations.
“He was never happier than when chatting to customers and it was never a problem getting him to the shop, it was a problem getting him out of the shop.
“Even when we went out at Christmas time he would always talk about work.”
Adrian lives in Gamston, a village just outside Retford, with his wife and daughter, and has an older brother.