A SHOP at the heart of York’s historic city centre is celebrating victory in a national retail award.

Its manager has dedicated its success to the retail community in Shambles, saying she hopes it will be bring a boost to spirits after a difficult year.

Natures Purest, which sells baby products, won the title of Best Independent Gift Retailer in the Progressive Preschool Awards.

Shop manager Jessica Albon said the success was a “total shock”, as she had attended the awards ceremony at London’s Dorchester Hotel along with senior figures from retail giants such as John Lewis and Tesco and had not expected to win.

The opening of the Natures Purest store in Shambles about two years ago was hailed as a “homecoming” because Jessica’s mother Jane Albon, who runs the parent company which produces organic baby products, is originally from York.

Jessica said she thought the York shop’s award success was partly down to the high ethics of the business, which applied to issues such as the way workers were treated in its factories and the way the cotton for its products were produced.

In addition they had very high standards of customer service and were very “old school” in the way they approached anyone coming into the shop, remembering they might be a first-time parent, grandparent or uncle or aunt, experiencing a special time in their lives.

“We still try to do our business with heart, which is hard today,” she said.

It had been particularly hard in the past year, which Jessica said had been a difficult one, starting with the impact on trade of the floods after Christmas and added to by other events during 2016.

But she said the community spirit displayed by other shopkeepers in Shambles had offset the problems during the year, with fellow traders co-operating with each other rather than acting as rivals. Fellow traders had congratulated her and she hoped that success would act as a boost to the rest of Shambles.