Marianne Hart Biggs was on the first day of her first holiday of the summer when she found out someone had driven through the front of her shop.
Marianne, who owns Baby on the Move in Akersten St, had just jumped out of the sea at Kaiteriteri around 4.45pm last Wednesday, when she got a call from Nelson Alarms that the alarm in the store had been activated.
She replied “oh, one of my team members has probably set it off accidentally”.
As she was on the phone, a call came in from her staff member, “if you’ve set the alarm off you owe me $50,” she joked.
“Mari, someone’s driven through the front of our shop.”
She loaded the kids into the car and headed back to Nelson.
“The driver doesn’t know what happened,” Marianne says. “It really has been just a genuine accident.”
“The vehicle has gone right through and bent the metal, so we are going to need a whole new storefront.”
She says there has been quite a loss of stock, simply because of the shattered glass.
“We are a safety business at the end of the day, we keep children safe, so we can’t be selling anything that has the risk of having broken glass in it.”
They have had to wrote off anything fabric as a loss and are working with the insurance company.
Marianne says her staff were amazing reaaranging the shop so that they could continue to open.
“We have completely portioned off that area of the shop, but we will close an extra day over Nelson Anniversary weekend to do a deep clean.”
Marianne says neighbours Trafalgar Painters were brilliant, helping them board up the store frontage and parking a truck across the store front to protect passerbys from any remaining glass and debris.
We have always wondered if someone will eventually run into the building, it’s a very, very busy area, there’s always trucks coming and going, boats, service vehicles etc.”
“It was quite the surprise but it really was just an accident.”
