retail

'It shows a nicer way of life': meet the makers of the £100 viral Christmas ad

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At this time of year business is usually steady rather than spectacular at the Hafod Hardware store in the Welsh town of Rhayader.

People pop in to buy nails, screws, perhaps a replacement mophead, a mousetrap or a pot of paint to spruce up their homes for the festive period. But this week it has been rather busier for Thomas Lewis Jones and Pauline Lewis, the shop’s grandson and grandmother team.

A two-minute Christmas video advertising the traditional ironmongers on East Street starring Jones’s two-year-old son, Arthur, has gone viral.

More than a million people worldwide have viewed the film, which only cost £100 to make, and the phone has been ringing continuously with people keen to explain how much it touched them.

“I think it has struck a chord because it’s such a simple message,” said Jones. “It’s real and it’s not saying: ‘Spend, spend, spend.’ I think you can tell it’s made by people who care about this business.”

Hafod Hardware
(@HafodHardware)

Here it is, the Hafod Hardware Christmas Advert 2019 #BeAKidThisChristmas pic.twitter.com/ThoZPKYuyt


December 2, 2019

Many have said the film captures the true spirit of Christmas more effectively than the multimillion-pound efforts that normally hit the headlines at this time of year.

Jones is too polite and modest to compare his film to John Lewis’s Edgar the dragon epic. “But I think it shows you don’t necessarily need CGI and a huge budget,” he said.

The plot of the Hafod Hardware film is not complicated. Arthur wakes up, brushes his teeth, eats breakfast and heads to the shop. He serves customers, decorates a Christmas tree – and in the final shot magically turns into his 30-year-old dad.

From left: Alan and Pauline Lewis with Thomas Lewis Jones.



From left: Alan and Pauline Lewis with Thomas Lewis Jones. Photograph: Dimitris Legakis/The Guardian

Jones and his friend, the film-maker Josh Holdaway, spent a few hours last Saturday making the advert. The £100 went on hiring a studio for a friend to record the soundtrack, a cover of Alpahville’s Forever Young.

At a time when UK high streets are struggling, it is heartening that a simple film featuring a family hardware store in a small mid-Wales town (population: 2,000) can cause such as stir.

Hafod Hardware has been in the family for just under a century. Sepia-tinted photos of some of the ancestors hang above the office door. It is hard to know what they would have made of the fuss. Hafod is a Welsh word referring to the movement of people and livestock from lowland winter pasture to higher summer grazing.

Pauline Lewis and her husband, Alan, took over 20 years ago and live above the shop. As a teenager, Jones went off to university to study art but did not take to it and 10 years ago, at the age of 20, returned to Rhayader and began to work in the shop.

It was supposed to be a stopgap. Jones was in a band and thought a full-time career in music beckoned. But the band broke up and Jones found that, actually, he liked working in the shop.

“I like being part of the community. You know everyone in the town. People pop in and say hello even if they don’t need anything. I love it here.” He married Laura, whom he had known since primary school (she does the accounts for the shop), and he hasn’t looked back.

Former store owners R D Ryder and his wife R L Ryder with their children, circa 1910.



Former store owners R D Ryder and his wife, R L Ryder, with their children, circa 1910. Photograph: Dimitris Legakis/The Guardian

The few downsides are the jokes about the grocery shop sitcom Open All Hours and the number of customers who like to launch into the Two Ronnies’ four candles/fork handles hardware store sketch.

This year’s Christmas film is Jones’s third for the store. The 2017 one made a few headlines in the local media. The 2018 film did not garner much attention. They weren’t planning to do a third but local people encouraged them to make another. “I didn’t want to let them down,” Jones said. “And then it snowballed.”

Jones’s grandmother bursts with pride. “Tom has brought us into the 21st century,” she said. Rather than contracting as the high street has struggled, the shop has doubled in size. As well as hardware staples, it sells fly fishing rods to tourists keen to try their luck on the River Wye, and maps and camping equipment for those on their way to the Cambrian mountains. Jones’s artwork – local views in the style of 1930s Great Western Railway posters – also sell well.

But the ongoing success has been to provide solid old-fashioned service. They deliver free to the town. If an older person needs a lightbulb and cannot reach to fit it, Jones will do it for them. He is not a trained locksmith but if someone is locked out of their home, he finds a way to help.

His gran thinks the video may have done so well because it is a break from grim everyday life in 2019. “People are so fed up with the news and the situation we are in. It speaks about different life values, it’s nostalgic – it shows a calmer, nicer way of life.”

Footfall hasn’t increased dramatically since the video was posted – after all, Rhayader is remote – but Jones hopes it may encourage more people to shop locally wherever they happen to be.

One of the most touching messages came in a card from a Cornish couple called Bill and Sue, who said they would be visiting Wales in the summer and planned a pilgrimage to Hafod Hardware.

“To Arthur and his daddy and mummy,” they wrote. “Thank you for reminding us of the true spirit of Christmas with your beautiful film, which touched our hearts.”



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