A WELL-KNOWN Chepstow pastry shop has shut down because its owner says business has dived since another supermarket has opened in the town.
Val Treherne, whose Caramelle Patisserie has produced cakes and bread in St Mary Street for 14 years, wrote a 'thank-you' message to all friends, customers and suppliers before closing the door on Saturday.
"We had hoped to integrate the patisserie with another enterprise in Chepstow, but to date this has not been possible," she said.
"All the things we do, cakes and so on, are now being done by the big stores. We don't even sell bread now, only if it is ordered."
She admitted that she and other traders had to bow to the inevitable, which was that people now wanted one-stop shopping. It was nevertheless a bitter blow for traders who had spent many years building their reputations.
Those reliant on making a living and paying staff and overheads for operating in high streets had to rely on a significant amount of daily trade.
Chepstow's problems are not helped by the fact that its newest and latest store, Tesco, with its own car park, is situated on the other side of a busy highway cutting it off from the town centre.
Three Towns Initiative organiser Nick Hamilton, whose brief is to bring visitors and trade to local towns, recognises the difficulty and says the town is trying to make the link more obvious and friendly.
Big plans were afoot to draw more visitors into Chepstow as well as making the centre even more attractive for local people.
"It's a lovely place. You can get anything you want here, and the service is so friendly – we need to get this across."
He said it was unfortunately inevitable that when new businesses opened others faced problems, but saw promoting the town and increasing its prosperity through a strong agenda of changes as key to maintaining its buoyancy and attraction.
Towards this an Easter competition with a Paris Disney holiday for four would be announced in the next two weeks, and in the pipeline an arrangement for visiting coaches to drop people at the top of town and pick up at the bottom.
A free round-town bus service was also under consideration.
And traders' leader Paul Rutter backed the campaign to revitalise the town, and added: "It is unfortunate when we lose a business, particularly one as prominent and long-standing as this."