DIY shop darling who taught us the true spirit of Christmas SATURDAY REPORT

Sick of election rows? Worn down by rampant commercialism? Meet the little star of this year’s surprise hit advert – made by his dad for £100 to promote their family store – and your festive mood will soar

THINGS have been busy at Hafod Hardware recently. With Christmas around the corner, people are stocking up at this handsome traditional store in the heart of mid-Wales, as well as buying stockingfillers — a calendar here, a decorative jug there. In that sense it’s business as usual — that is, apart from the endless trill of the shop telephone. ‘It’s been ringing non-stop for the last couple of days,’ says Pauline Lewis, Hafod’s owner of 20 years’ standing, together with husband Alan and grandson Tom.

‘We’ve had calls from all over and someone sent me a message last night from Morocco saying how much they loved our Christmas advert and how touched they were by it. It’s lovely, really.’

It certainly is — for the ad in question is a million miles from the swishy and expensive festive offerings that usually get people talking, be it John Lewis’s animated festive dragon or Marks & Spencer’s panoply of snappily dressed jumper-wearers.

Hafod Hardware’s is a far humbler affair: a two-minute home-made video filmed with a £100 budget and uploaded onto social media less than a week ago.

Despite that inauspicious start, as of this weekend, it had garnered more than a million views and counting.

Because what the film lacked in financing it more than makes up for in fatherly love and creativity — an altogether winning recipe that has captured the hearts of the British public, and those of the world, too.

An undeniably charming effort, it features a winsome and adorable two- year- old called Arthur — Pauline’s great-grandson and Tom’s son — who takes on the role of shopkeeper.

AGAINST a backdrop of Alphaville’s song Forever Young, we see Arthur waking up and heading to work where, donning an apron, he sweeps floors, stocks shelves, serves a series of customers and makes his charming best effort to gift-wrap purchases.

As the store closes he bends to pick up a Christmas tree — before the camera sees him morph into his dad Tom LewisJones, 30, who carries the tree home as the slogan appears: ‘Be a kid this Christmas.’

It’s about as far from a hard sell as you can get — and perhaps one reason why, in this era of frenzied consumerism, it has struck such a chord.

Then there’s the simple values it evokes — that of an honest day’s work and the joy of family. That’s what 76-yearold Pauline thinks anyway, pondering on the film’s unexpected success.

‘I think people are so fed up with the news and the general situation,’ she says. ‘ This speaks about different life values, nostalgia for a calmer, nicer way of life.’

‘It’s a simple story isn’t it?’ adds her grandson, Tom. ‘And it’s real — because we’re a real family. There’s four generations of my family here.’ For make no mistake: Hafod Hardware is a true family business in an era when the phrase sometimes feels like it’s at risk of becoming obsolete.

Save for a period of 17 years, the store, in the picturesque village of Rhayader in Powys — population 2,000 — has been in the family since 1895.

‘My father’s side of the family has lived in Rhayader for eight generations and it was my grandfather’s cousins who first took on the store in 1895,’ says Tom.

It remained in the family until the early 1980s, when it was sold to an unrelated young couple who ran it for 17 years — at which point Pauline and husband Alan, 82, decided to buy it back after years working in the hotel and pub business.

‘We bought it with a view to retirement — so that didn’t quite work out as planned!’ she laughs.

Their daughter Shelley — Tom’s mum — was also initially involved, but after she left to focus on other business interests, Tom, then 20, decided to step in.

‘He’d been to university for a while, wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do with himself and then found his calling,’ Pauline says with a twinkle.

Tom doesn’t disagree: a year into his art and photography degree at Newport University he decided being a ‘ skint student’ was not his scene and returned to his hometown to pursue other options.

He formed a band, joined the local fire brigade and then decided to use his remaining hours to help out in his grandparents’ store.

‘It was meant to be a stopgap really,’ he muses now. ‘I really wanted to make a living in the music business, but it didn’t work out. The band broke up, and I realised I liked working here. I liked the job, I liked working with people.’

By then he had also embarked on a relationship with his now 29-year- old accountant wife Laura. ‘We were at primary school together but then she’d gone off to university,’ he says. ‘She came back here afterwards. We got together, got married, then Arthur came along pretty quickly.’

Right on cue the little chap in question tootles into view wielding a tape measure. He looks right at home, and indeed he is.

‘It’s like his second home here really,’ says Tom. ‘All the jobs you see him doing in the advert — well it’s nothing new to him. All this stuff is like his playground.’

Arthur even has his own little workbench bang in the middle of the shop, nestled alongside the neatly stacked pots, paints, cleaning products and buckets that are the hallmark of the traditional — but now increasingly rare — local hardware shop.

There’s innovation here too though, in the form of artisan tableware and Tom’s handproduced prints of the Welsh countryside, which have pride of place in the window. ‘He’s really put his stamp on the business and dragged us into the 21st century,’ says Pauline.

Because as any independent retailer — indeed any smallbusiness owner — will testify, these are difficult times. Mammoth out- of- town shopping centres and the inexorable rise of web shopping have pushed people away from the high street, while