A north Cardiff opticians has expanded its offering to local customers as part of a £450,000 renovation.
The expansion of Specsavers at Cardiff Lifestyle Shopping Park in Llanishen includes taking over the adjoining unit – formerly the Carphone Warehouse – almost doubling the store’s footprint.
The new-look store has six test rooms, up from three, and offers twice the number of audiology clinics. There is also a bigger floor and waiting area to improve the customer experience, as well as new field test equipment and a new optical coherence tomography (OCT) machine.
Since opening in October 2016, the team has grown from 16 staff members to 33. Eight members of the team have been at the store since it was first opened by directors Frank Moloney, James Deavall and Clare Corcoran.
Ms Corcoran, Llanishen optical director and divisional chair for Specsavers in Wales, says: ‘After six years in business at Llanishen, we are extremely excited to have expanded to meet our growing customer demand.
‘According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), in Cardiff there are approximately 9,530 people living with sight loss, of whom 1,543 are registered blind or partially sighted. Nationally, these numbers are only going up, so we as opticians need to act fast if we are to help reverse these trends. We hope by having extra space to invest in additional state-of-the-art kit, we can do just that.’
To mark the expansion, Specsavers Llanishen hosted a fundraiser in aid of Holibobs – a Birchgrove-based children’s cancer charity that funds holidays for children with leukaemia and their families. The team was able to raise more than £150 for the vital cause.
This comes off the back of recent successful fundraising efforts at the store, which in spring raised more than £200 with a bake sale for the Rhiwbina Men’s Shed – which aims to tackle social isolation for men in the north Cardiff community.
Ms Corcoran adds: ‘One thing the pandemic showed us at Specsavers was how vibrant the community spirit is in north Cardiff. We want our relaunch party to be an opportunity to showcase this and gather together to raise money for a charity that does such amazing work in north Cardiff.’