That some small businesses are failing because they don’t adapt to the needs of their customers?

[Isawyou]

I try to shop local. Fortunately I do have some great independent places nearby.

What I am finding frustrating is for example the fruit and veg shop closes at 4.30pm. They start packing up at 3.45pm and it is really difficult to buy things from there where they are stacking all the stands with the produce inside. They also look unhappy at customers coming to buy at packing up time. It is easier to go to the Tesco express that stays open until midnight.

Other shops do not open until 10am and close early. So I can’t get there before work or after work.

They complain their businesses are not doing well and people do not shop local but they are not exactly facilitating it for the customers either.

Many want good flexible services, yet don’t want to be flexible themselves. Just look at all the WFH threads.

So society is acting like individuals rather than a collective. People want to do what suits them.

They don’t take cards because if they do their takings would be much harder to conceal from the taxman.

think about it. You have to register for VAT at £85k turnover. So many takeaways declare income of just less than that, so they don’t have to register and can keep the 1/6th of their earnings they’d otherwise be handing over to HMRC. They have the added bonus of paying less income tax too.

Although I have advised him to ditch nuisance customers and be firmer

Customers who enquire what the call out charges are are not being a nuisance. He sounds like a scammer to me.

I always carry both.

Erm the problem with your theory is he doesn't go out, nor does he reveal costs.

So how do people actually pay, then? Do they just ask nicely if he'd mind awfully doing whatever he thinks is needed, leave their credit card with him and then discover how much he charged once the credit card bill comes in?

He's sounding rather like some of these grumpy shopkeepers on here, who want to make a good living from customers but nevertheless resent the customers from actually coming in and looking at the goods for sale.

Most business transactions are based on an agreed exchange of goods and/or services - they're not like the BBC paying Graham Norton a huge salary for simply 'being wonderful' and then hoping he might make them a few programmes if he has chance.

I always remember going in a discount bookshop in Chester where they didn't bother to display the books at all, but just had them in tightly packed piles on a huge table.

Anybody with half a business brain would have at least put them in piles of the same title, so you would only need to glance across and see the top one, but no, they'd designed it so that you would have to reach in and pick up the pile (without disturbing the neighbouring piles) and look through the books, before dropping them back into their slot.

The woman in there was like a real-life Bernard Black! She was furious with me for doing this, 'messing up her display' (if stacking up books like a warehouse actually constitutes a display, I suppose). I think she genuinely rationalised it that she had a bookshop, customers would come in and take 'A Book' and then buy it. No thought at all that people might actually want to see the titles she had available and decide if there were any that they wanted!

So everyone on MN who supports the public sector strikes thinks that small business owners should be open before 8am until after 6pm preferably six or even seven days a week.

No @user1497787065 what people are saying is that if small business owners want working people to use their business, then they need to consider their business hours.

So everyone on MN who supports the public sector strikes thinks that small business owners should be open before 8am until after 6pm preferably six or even seven days a week.

I don't think people are saying that; but it's often a case of knowing your market and picking a good time when the custom is there. Be open when people are around before work/school or after they get home, if not both. If you specialise in selling breakfast butties to workers, you can probably be finished and on your way home for the day by 11am or earlier; but you do need to be open and serving before 8:30am.

It just seems a bit silly to not open before most people are at work and then close before they finish work.

Similarly with the days, as long as you make your opening days clear and stick to them, you'd be much better to have a day or two off but then open longer hours on the other days. Much easier for people working 'traditional' hours to be able to give you custom if you're only open 8-6 on Wednesdays and Fridays rather than 10-3 five days a week.

My parents ran their own retail business long ago and would have preferred not to have to work on Saturdays, but realised that it was (then at least) the busiest day for custom, so they opened Tuesday-Saturday and had Sunday and Monday as their weekend. Yes, some people would grumble that they weren't open on Mondays, but virtually nobody was unable to get there at all during the week when they were open if they wanted to.

Civil service does you know w hat? 7-7 window usually. Dpending on business needs people can do their hours between 7am-7pm.
So one day you can do 7-3, then day when it's needed or you need it you can do 11-7.
Business should, and some do,employ similar thinking but not on ad hoc basis, of course.

Many restaurants already have irregular opening hours for example with some day starting earlier, some day closing later. That is what their market required.

I don't see why someone couldn't do 2 days early open-close and 2 days late open close for example. Some businesses do themselves no favour by being rigid and then moan no one wants to support them.

There are two sides to this.
As a customer I want businesses to be open the hours that suit me and a friendly person to help me.

But the business owners are looking for a lifestyle that works for them and to make as much money as they need. So small businesses often don't open every day and open the hours that suit them the best.

I used to work in the public sector and regularly worked weekends, started at 7am, shift work, occasionally night work. So whats the issue here? If you start your own business you need to consider what hours your customers will require you to be open. If you want to only open 10-4 then thats entirely your choice but you cant then moan that you lack trade.

No. But if start work at 8am and work through until 4.00pm (school) plus have to be in school at lunch time, how can I support a local business that is only open from 8am until 4pm Monday to Friday? It is physically impossible.

But then we get our local shop owners complaining that 'no-one uses the high street - use it or lose it'. Which we would if they opened their doors at the weekend! Small businesses either open when customers are around or make a life style decision to be open when it suits the business owners lifestyle. Either is fine but a business can't have both. I have an on line business as well as working full time. My decision. I don't moan if a customer orders something on a Sunday for urgent despatch - if I don't want to do it, I shut the on line shop at the weekend. I can't have it both ways and I don't expect to be asked to do that by high street shops. Small businesses need to make up their minds what they want, provide it or don't and have the consequences. It's pure economics.

I kind of want to go there now...

At least yours is open (ish) on Saturdays.

Ours deemed it sensible to run a market from 9am - 1pm on Fridays...which means most people can only use it on a day off! And yes, they then moan that they're having falling footfall.

OK then, I'll just ask the boss if I can nip out at 10am to buy a pound of potatoes and a few onions shall I? Or should I just pop into the nearest supermarket when I finish work at 4pm on Fridays? Umm...let's think about that one?

And yes, those of us who actually do make the effort to use the market on a Friday when we have that precious day off, have asked if they can move it to a Saturday. A few do other, more profitable, markets then and one stall owners doesn't work weekends as she wants to spend it with her family. Fair enough, but people who work can't buy from her most of the year. Her problem, her solution.

Ex - small business owner here, garage/petrol station. Ran it for 12 years after building it up from nothing, very stressful, had £20000 grand of my money invested and my house on the line.
You do learn and adapt to customers but the stress of losing everything is immense, the fear factor drives you.

However, I couldn't keep all customers happy, I couldn't accommodate them all, a good few complained that I would go bust if I didn't do this or do that. Many complained, "what's the harm in you staying open a bit if I come in as your closing". All common complaints. On the other hand, 80-90% of our customers were happy, they were repeat business, they were the ones I focused on and despite the others thinking the business was being run badly, the 80-90% of them allowed the business to flourish.

Did I ever think of accommodating the other 10-20%, no, I found the whole process so stressful that on the odd occasion, I tried the uptake on the changes was low, not profitable and just was not financially viable for the business.

That was just my business, all others are different, being run for different reasons, some to expand and grow, others want to make money, and some small businesses are run by owners as a means to an end to pay their overheads and make a small amount for them to live on and that's all they want.

I heard one employee of another small business complain about how it was run, when the owners were moving on, I suggested they step in and run it the way they thought it should be, strangle they refused flat out. The owners in this instance had once been in his shoes but did take it over and tried it but realised it wasn't for them. Many people only see it from the outside and are never in a position to experience running a small business, I know two others who tried and they wrapped it too as they found it too hard going on their own.

Bearing this in mind, I do wonder, If many on here think that a lot of these businesses are run poorly, how many of you would take the financial risk and stress to go and show us how it should be done...........just try it, you might end up eating your words as well intended as they are!

I think if the business wants to operate on their own choice of hours and what suits them best that is fine but it is the businesses who have reduced hours who are then complaining the customers are going elsewhere and not shopping local. Like the fruit and veg I mentioned in my first post. They start packing up at 3.45. It is no surprise that people ignore their shop altogether.

They can't afford the staff. You shop at the supermarkets if you want, I'll make the effort to use my local greengrocer who is perfectly entitled to have a day off on Sunday 🤷‍♀️

No, we think that if you only open when the majority of your customers are working that you will limit your sales.

I'm never going to take time off work to visit a local shop, it isn't happening. I don't have enough leave to cover the school holidays as it is so i'm not wasting it.

Oh, and my greengrocer gets up at 4am every day to stock the shop. I don't begrudge him shutting at 3. I go on my day off.

It is not about accommodating everybody. That is impossible. But if a businesses takings are seriously down and they are not adapting to what the majority of the customers needs, then that is an issue.

My locals business complain people don’t shop local and still don’t change their hours to actually make it accessible for people.

Bearing this in mind, I do wonder, If many on here think that a lot of these businesses are run poorly, how many of you would take the financial risk and stress to go and show us how it should be done...........just try it, you might end up eating your words as well intended as they are

I run my own business so I am well aware of the pressures and stress it involves. I went into it with my eyes open and I knew how hard it would be. I started up just before Covid hit so have that to deal with plus the fall out too. However, I am also aware that listening to your customers is the key to being successful. Business that cannot adapt will fail so being able to adapt is the most important issue for me. Obviously businesses fail for many reasons but if I were only to open 10-4 I know I would fail because it wouldnt suit my customers and there would be financial consequences. I have taken a huge financial risk to start up which makes it very important to listen to feedback from the people who pay my bills.

That is fine. But that doesn’t suit most people. My grocer that packs up early often misses the after school crowd too. Yet is complaining that people do not shop local.

I don’t begrudge him shutting early. I just shop at the other better grocer that has introduced later hours a couple of evenings a week. They are doing a roaring trade and deservedly so.

The pp with the husband who is a heating engineer/plumber but thinks it's beneath them to give a price should learn from a local kitchen supplier near me. Obviously kitchen prices vary enormously, but they have a few photos of kitchens they've done recently with the cost. So you at least get an idea of what a kitchen of the same size and type of unit would cost.

A heating engineer can set out their call out charge on their website, and give example problems and what they typically cost to fix, eg a broken valve, or a new pump, or a new circuit board for a boiler, or a new radiator. It's really not that difficult.

Asking for a cost breakdown over the phone without a previous visual mitigated assessment is impossible.

But asking on the phone if there’s a call out charge to undertake the visual inspection is reasonable - many tradesmen do and I want to know before he arrives so I can pay him, or decide the call out charge is unaffordable for me at that moment in time. Unless he advertises that he’ll do an initial call out free of charge how would I know what it would cost me?