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independentsAcross our communities dozens of local independent businesses are fighting off competition from national and multi national companies.Here, we meet just a handful of them.This April one of Norfolk's oldest family shop groups celebrates 170 years of trading having not just survived but thrived through the continuing onslaught of the chain store.Palmers began life in 1837 when Garwood Burton Palmer opened a small drapery shop in Yarmouth market place.Nearly two centuries later Palmers is not only still an independent business but that shop is now a large department store and Palmers boasts outlets in Dereham, Lowestoft, Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket.The group is one of the largest independent retail companies in East Anglia employing more than 400 staff and while its success is reminiscent of an age when family stores dominated the high street it is also down to keeping up with the times.Present chairman and managing director Bruce Sturrock is the great, great, great nephew of Garwood Burton Palmer and represents the fifth generation of family management.He said: "One of the things we put a lot of emphasis on is the personal and specialist service and although we are very proud of being 170 years old the only reason we are here is because we have changed."There have been some incredible changes just over the past few years with the internet and new developments like Chapelfield opening and more out of town complexes and we are aware that we have to keep up with that to compete."Nearly three years ago the group bought Chadds in Lowestoft transforming it and next month will see a Principles concession going in to the store. Palmers already boasts lines by up to the minute fashion lines like French Connection and Morgan.There are also modernisation plans afoot for the original Yarmouth base, which still boasts one of the central meeting points in the town a coffee shop that sees 6,000 to 10,000 people going through each week.But the quality of the shopping experience never detracts from the personal service which isn't bound up in the bureaucracy that can infuriate chain store customers. If customers complain, which Mr Sturrock says they rarely need to, they can see