The shop with
the orange door

Alan Fenwick spent twelve years with a national hearing chain. He was good at it. He was also asked, every month, why his conversion rate was lower than the region's, and the answer was that he kept telling people they did not need hearing aids yet. In 2009 he took a lease on an empty shoe shop on Market Place, painted the door orange so his mother could find it, and put three rules on the wall: the test is free, the prices are on the wall, and nobody is paid on sales.

The rules have not changed. What has grown around them is the equipment (real-ear measurement from the first week, when almost nobody outside a hospital did it), the people (Priya from the NHS tinnitus clinic, Tom with his car full of test kit, Helen when the surgery stopped doing ears, Jenny and her bench), and the numbers, which we count every January and publish, including the pairs that came back.

Most of our patients are over 60 and most of them waited too long. So everything here is slow on purpose: an hour for a test, large print on every letter, a chair with arms in every room, a loop at the desk, and Sandra, who speaks clearly and repeats things without being asked. You should leave hearing the room again, and understanding what we did.