Couple take business back home as they close shop

THE couple who run Henley Scan are to close their shop and run the business from home instead.

Eva and Graham Rickett, who opened the Reading Road scan and print shop two years ago, say they are downsizing due to rising costs and illness.

They plan to build a garden office at their house in King’s Road, where they ran the business digitising old media such as photographs, negatives, VHS and camcorder tapes for three years previously.

The shop will close by the end of this month.

Mrs Rickett said: “We want people to know that we are moving, not closing. We’ve had two fantastic years on ‘Southside’ but due to a combination of fuel bills, our ages and, unfortunately, ill health, we’ve decided to readdress the work and life balance.”

Last year, Mrs Rickett was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder called birdshot uveitis, a chronic inflammatory eye condition that affects one in 200,000 people.

She said: “It has got to do with the blood flow to the eyes so without treatment, I would go blind.

“The condition started durng the pandemic but I didn’t see a doctor because of covid. I finally saw one in January last year when it deteriorated and in March I was diagnosed.

“It’s quite intense treatment with immunesuppressants and steroids to begin with so last summer I had a lot of hospital visits, a lot of not very nice meds and I was very tired.”

With Mrs Rickett’s condition under control with medication, her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October.

A few days later, he underwent a seven-hour operation to remove the cancerous tumours. Since Christmas he has had 18 bouts of chemotherapy treatment in six cycles.

Mrs Rickett said: “Currently, there is no sign of cancer in Graham, which is big. We are thrilled with that and grateful to the NHS and the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. But with pancreatic cancer, the first two years are vital so he will have scans every four months. We knew very little about pancreatic cancer until last year but the death rate is about 50 per cent in the first months after diagnosis and only 25 per cent survive five years with stage 2B, which is what Graham had, and go into remission.

“We are cautiously optimistic but also realistic and are trying to balance life with our wonderful business.”

The shop, which was officially opened by Mayor Sarah Miller, has built up a loyal customer base.

Mrs Rickett said: “Henley has been so good to us and the business community has been great.

“We’ve got a lot of champions. A lot of people have supported us on social media, we’ve had a lot of people recommend us and we have a lot of lovely people who keep coming back with little jobs. We are very grateful.”

The couple work with Daniel Harwood, 22, who came to them for work experience three and a half years ago. He so enjoyed his time at the business he then studied film media at Bracknell College and achieved three distinctions.

Mrs Rickett said: “When Graham became ill we had four days’ notice that he was to have surgery and Daniel just stepped up and took over 90 per cent of his work. It was just wonderful.” The couple have enjoyed working on clients’ personal items such as sentimental family images that have been torn or damaged beyond recognition. They fix the image seamlessly, even adding missing features, and recently started to use AI to recreate images that have been significantly damaged.

Mrs Rickett said: “It such a wonderful feeling to do things like that. We’ve heard the word ‘priceless’ so many times from customers. We will still be able to do all that at home.”

One of her most memorable moments from working in the shop was when a customer brought in some damaged video tapes.

Mrs Rickett said: “He put a bag of tapes to bring here behind his car and then accidentally reversed over it, so there were several damaged tapes.”

Mr Harwood managed to salvage the films and put them in new cases.

“Daniel is a bit of a whiz kid,” said Mrs Rickett. “The poor guy was so embarrassed but we laughed about it. He thought he’d ruined them.”

Mr Rickett said that another memorable occasion was a near mishap with a VHS tape with a recording of a couple’s wedding anniversary celebration.

He said: “A lady brought the tape in to be converted and the next day I got this call from this guy saying, ‘I have feeling I have overwritten it with a Formula 1 race’. He was so worried and said could I tell him first before I told his wife. Thankfully, it was okay but it was so funny.”

Henley Scan has had some well-known clients, including the Roux brothers who ordered a digital photo book following the death of their father, the celebrity chef Michel Roux.

Mrs Rickett said: “There is a real honour in being trusted and it doesn’t matter if someone is famous or not because it’s the trust that’s important because you do get quite intimate information about people.

“I mean it’s so personal. People think we watch a video but don’t, we just put it on and make sure the quality is fine.”

The Ricketts recently celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary. They first met in Sweden, Mrs Rickett’s home country, where they were both working for Ericsson software in 1985. They have three children and moved to Henley in 2015.

Mrs Rickett said they came up with idea for the business 15 years ago when she was visiting her family in Sweden.

She said: “My brother had taken some photos from our family album of when we were young because it was just him in them with his moped.

“I got really quite upset because I thought, ‘I remember the day you were given your moped — yeah, it’s important to me, that’s my memory as well’.

“I asked my mum if I could take the albums and scan the photos and then Graham gave me a scanner for our 22nd wedding anniversary and I got terribly excited.

“So we started with our photos and then friends of ours were asking, ‘Can you do ours?’ and Graham said, ‘There’s a business out of this’.

‘We thought, ‘Wouldn’t be great if there was holiday out of it every year’ and then it just grew.”

The couple say the business is now more likely to run on an appointment basis but they are considering having open door days.

“We love what we do and hope to continue helping everyone with their memories for many more years,” said Mrs Rickett.

Henley Scan’s web address, phone number and email addresses will stay the same. Updates will be posted on its social media page, @henleyscan