Ealing Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We will be profiling some of these businesses and organisations regularly in a feature called 'UP CLOSE in Ealing.'

Today we caught up with Robert Newman, the owner of card and party shop, Allbright Cards.

You may have heard of Allbright Glass on Northfield Avenue, but have you heard about Allbright Cards right next door?

You're forgiven if not, as Allbright Cards only opened its doors to the public on April 12, once non-essential shops were allowed to reopen as part of the government's roadmap out of lockdown.

Robert Newman is the man behind Allbright Cards, a card and party shop, that also sells children's toys.

Robert owns two other card stores, one in Kent and one in Ruislip – where he lives.

When the pandemic started and lockdown forced his stores to shut, he started working for Allbright Glass, which is owned by his brother Bryan and Patryk Milewski.

Robert told Ealing Nub News: "My card stores had to close as they were deemed to be non-essential, so I started helping out at Allbright Glass.

"I deal with customer service, replying to emails and doing all the admin stuff, basically everything apart from actually glazing."

During his time at Allbright Glass, he thought it would be a good idea to take a section of the shop and turn it in to a card and party store.

He said: "I felt like there wasn't something like this in Ealing and in particular Northfields, so thought it could work quite well.

"There was a part of the shop that didn't look too nice, so I thought why not make it pretty and create another business here."

Although the new shop is quite small, Robert is very happy with the use of space that he's made, as he's managed to fit a lot into his new store.

The first two months have been very successful, and Robert is pleased to see that the people of Ealing and Northfields have taken kindly to the shop already.

He said: "My other two shops run themselves as I've got great staff working there, so I spend all my time here."

Robert still works at Allbright Glass next door and if a customer wants to buy something from the card shop, they can pick it out themselves and then bring it next door to pay.

"It's all built on trust, we know the people here are honest and will go next door to pay", he added.

Allbright Cards is open six days a week, Monday to Friday 9am-4pm and 9am-2pm on Saturdays.