Daughter's Single Tweet Saves Dad's Business From Going Under

A caring daughter has managed to save her dad's struggling car repair business all thanks to a single tweet.

Lockdown has had a huge impact on Harley Walsh's dad Jim's business in East Kilbride, Scotland, which stayed open as an essential business.

The amount of customers had dropped from around five per day to less than five per week during recent weeks as travel restrictions and other Covid measures dented the amount of drivers on the road, and Harley's tweet was an attempt to reverse her dad's fortunes.

Twitter

Incredibly enough, tweet gained over 19,000 likes and 13,000 retweets and - more importantly - a load of new customers.

"It's been dire for dad recently", Harley said, speaking to BBC Radio Scotland.

"He's never had any issues, but on Thursday he had no one in - it's been like that for a few months now.

"I actually had to persuade my mum and dad to let me put [the tweet] up because he just felt a bit like, 'uch I'm just asking people to come in'.

"I said 'but dad you're asking for honest work'. It kind of blew up, he was so overwhelmed."

Now, the garage is fully booked for the rest of this week and next, and even more pleasingly the majority of the new business drummed up has come from younger customers who they expect will now return in the future.

"We're just hoping that it can continue," said Harley. "Dad seems to think that young folk don't need their cars fixed so he was really surprised at how many young people were reaching out to him for MOTs, services and brakes.

"It just shows that there's good people and it's nice to see that on social media."

Harley Walsh

Most importantly it's helped her dad's mental health improve, after Harley admitted he'd struggled as the business dried up.

"Last week he just kept coming over and giving me a hug, just randomly during the day when I was helping him at work. It's been so good to see him like this, it's made such a difference," she said.

It just goes to the show the power that one tweet can still have and is a fantastic good news story during an incredibly tough time for business owners, with many finding themselves in a similar position to Harley's dad.

Topics: UK News, Business, Twitter

Simon Catling