"You spend all month trying to make next month's rent, there's rarely anything left over for you." That's the life for Anton Jaskiewicz, the owner of The Battery Shop at Oldham's Tommyfield Market. Declining town centre footfall and rent pressure is making it difficult to get by.
One look at his stall and its easy to see why he's had so much success over the years, with every bulb, battery, and assorted oddment you could ever need for the house neatly lined up, but with the rise of online shopping and supermarkets expanding their product offering, fewer and fewer people have come to the stall in search of their household needs.
Anton said: "There's a lot less people coming through. The expenses are still the same but your takings are way down, it's hard work, trust me. You've got Amazon, got supermarkets, everything's against us. At supermarkets you can just park up for nothing and get what you need but here you've got to pay if you just want to nip in for one or two things.
