If shops want you to ‘shop local’…

[Alwayslostthedummy]

Why do they have such prohibitive opening hours?

We need to buy a new fridge/freezer, would prefer to shop local as I hate giving money to Currys etc because of bad experiences. Looking at the shops selling appliances within a 20 mile radius, all are closed on Sundays and a fair few closed Saturdays too!

Its the same in my local high street, there are a couple of nice fancy gifty type shops where I would buy presents/homewards/toys. One is closed all weekend and the other opens for 4 hours on Saturday.

AIBU to think businesses are missing a trick here? I don’t have any data on this but presume in a lot of cases those with spending power work during the week. Is it any wonder retail parks and online shopping is taking over?

You need to be a really smart retailer to survive on any local high street now. Ours is still pretty good, but the shops I enjoy and spend money in (apart from the butcher) are the ones that buy well for the customers/demographic they know. It's not available cheaper on Amazon. A favourite local dress shop was (rightly IMO) incensed when one of her biggest selling brands opened their own store 150 yards away. But she's good at retail, and has responded by stocking a wider range of different and mostly European ranges, which makes her shop even more distinctive. And not at a higher price point either. It's still where I would start if I wanted something a bit fancier than basic.

Whilst I agree with this, they then can’t complain if nobody uses their business! A few near me have closed down due to lack of custom but are only open weekdays and sometimes then even decide not to open randomly. If you don’t open when your customers need you then you can’t be annoyed they go elsewhere.

There's 2 shops in my local town that are never open when I walk past in the daytime and don't display any opening hours. I don't know how they sell anything. One sells women's clothes, the other sells children's toys.
There's also a bistro which has no opening hours in the window or even a menu. In fact, if it wasn't for the tables and chairs inside, you'd wonder if it was still a business. I only walk past in the daytime, so it's possible it's open in the evenings, but a friend who lives in town said they'd love to give it a try if only they knew what food they did and when it is open!

Re electrical stores, my local one is a member of the Euronics buying group. Most of what they sell by way of appliances is on the Euronics website and it would be easy to look on there, then ring the store and arrange payment and delivery over the phone. Our store can often deliver next day if you're in a rush and are much more reliable than Currys.

Yes, local shop owners are always posting to Facebook about how no one uses their shop. Use it or lose it. But they sell a combination of absolute shite (old stale cakes, unbranded baked beans, dried custard packets, still currently selling candy canes from last Christmas 😂) and high end local produce (£8 a jar local honey, £45 a bottle local artisanal vodka, etc). It’s all stuff that’s either too shit to buy unless you were truly starving and desperate, and stuff you could not afford unless you’re a City banker on your way through to your country house.

The hours aren’t great either 9:30-5:30 during the week and only 9-12 on a Saturday (when people are actually home and need milk or butter or an extra bottle of £20 wine).

It probably doesn’t help that the owner also posts freely about his love for Nigel Farage on his business page either and bans anyone who has anything negative to say about it. One poor villager is actually banned from using the shop for being so anti-Reform UK. 😂

And they wonder why business isn’t great.

The school uniform shop here doesn't open weekends. Ffs

Old habits die hard might be part of it?

Cafes near primary schools that didn’t open until 10am are the two businesses that have failed around here recently. One owner has moaned about Starbucks on Facebook and failed to take any responsibility.

But if most of them are only open. 9-5 Monday to Friday and only a couple of hours on a Saturday (some not at all) then how are people who work full time supposed to shop there? They can’t complain they have low custom when they are not open the hours that suit their customers!

yes of course they have families etc we know that and many would prefer to shop with them because of that, but they open to suit themselves not their customers.

There is a haberdashery near me that does more online trade than in the store. Due the the nature of fabrics it’s as much sense to have a shop open as just have a warehouse space. Strangely their biggest seller is lengths of rainbow ribbon.

I'm not asking to be provoking , just generally curious what hours people would like shops to be open? I work in a shop (not independent) and our opening hours are Mon -Sat 10:00- 19:00 and 6h on a Sun . To facilitate those hours you have to have staff between 07:00 and 20:00 during the week to allow for stock delivery and processing, cleaning, cashing up etc. Recruitment is always a challenge and then when people take a job they then say they can only do 1 late shift /cant do weekends/ can only work until 6pm etc etc. Its really hard. I'm not sure what the solution is.
I do agree that some of the hours mentioned are ridiculously limited when stores are only opening for 1- 4 h a day.

In the local ones near me I'm not asking for much even if they don't open every day 9-5 inc weekends. But many shops seem to want weekends off you know when most people are about.

The most successful business in my town is run by a middle aged woman who actually gets that a successful retail business means working weekends. She shuts shop mondays and tuesdays when footfall is lowest, and opens saturdays 9.30 - 5 and sundays 10-4. She opens extra days in december and shuts for her own holiday in january and august when its quiet. She's not the cheapest - but she gets business because she's actively trying to run a business based on what customers want. A lot of other businesses have come and gone because they've had owners trying to fit the business around their own wants and needs. Trying to run a cafe during school hours, or be self employed because they think its super flexible & not realising you can't constantly let customers down.

I know.

I suggested to the owner of a pet supply shop that he offer delivery if he didn't want to increase his opening hours, and you'd have thought that I asked him to clean my toilet. The umbrage.

He owns a nice truck and could get a teen to naked the deliveries. And all he ever does is complain about Amazon.

Oh well.

Well, it kind of depends on what you think life is about.

Is it about being able to shop at all hours? Or about having a viable local economy? Is it about shop clerks being obliged to work all kinds of crazy hours for crap pay or ?

We've become increasingly expected that we should have access to shops and services at all hours, with no need to plan ahead etc. It used to be very normal to have much more restricted hours for things like shopping and banking and such. People planned ahead.

With women normally in the workforce FT, this is much harder now, so it's tricky for customers to make it work.

But it's also hard for shops to be open at all hours like an online place is.

The fact that so many people now shop online makes it a lot harder for shops too. They can't afford to staff and keep stock in to the same degree.

If we want good local shops in the end we will probably have to bite the bullet to and give up some convenience.

Sorry but it's up to the businesses to adapt to the consumer, not the other way round. Evolve or die.

In my local town, there’s a beautiful gift & craft shop.
Always amazes me that they don’t open on Sunday, when there’s a massive food market, locals go there due a day out / walk / playground / park / other shops. And are exactly the sort of folks with the disposable income to buy in such a place…

A small business owner I know has just made the decision to close on Saturdays for a while. She works six days a week as it is, and Saturday is her worst day for turnover. She has more people browsing but not actually buying. She does sell online as well. She's in a big city centre with excellent footfall.
I've contemplated opening a physical shop in addition to my online presence. There is no way I could sustain working 6-7 days a week but with the minimum wage increases I couldn't afford to staff it either and still cover the rent, rates, gas and electric, water, insurance, accountancy fees; the list of outgoings is endless.
Perhaps the shops you are saying you want to buy from have been so unsupported that they can no longer afford to be open every day just in case you want to go buy a single item every six years.

We have a local bakery which is now sadly closed but was very successful for years and opened 11-6 on weekdays (10-5 Sat). People found it much more convenient to buy bread at 5.30 than 2.30 like the other one that was only open 8-3 and closed within about 2 years.

You can’t ’plan ahead’ if the store isn’t open during the hours I’m not at work. Or opens and closes when it fancies.

The traditional baker open at 8am was great in the days of the housewife. That is no more. I’d love to be able to pick up a loaf of fresh bread on my way home from work.

No one expects shops open all hours!

The point is that more people work now. The women who used to shop 2 -3 times a week, monday - fri, 40 years ago, are now working. Whether as cleaners, accountants, hotel receptionists, lawyers, doctors, teachers, they are largely at work monday to friday. In city centres they might run an errand at lunch or after work, but they simply aren't there to shop in their local small town high street unless its the weekend. So these shops, bakeries & cafes etc need to not bother opening as much mon-fri, and focus on weekend trade.

Its not about expecting people to open 24/7. Its about aligning when you open to when people are actually free to go shopping.

Our local market is on a Thursday, 9-3. They moan people don't support it but we are all at work!

Our inde shops are expensive, I can get the same stuff online cheaper so why would I faff about driving into town, paying for parking, to pay more for an item I can get delivered to my home for free on Amazon prime? I know the main issue is the high rents, but that's down to greedy landlords in my town. Thing is, it's not my responsibility to pay over the odds to help someone pay their rent. It's harsh but that's the reality.

I actually really like shopping in actual shops, but it's not cost effective.

And to be honest, its not really shops i want. Clearly physically shops will struggle to compete with online. Its a much cheaper way to trade.

What customers want from the high street now is what they can't buy online.

Gyms & fitness
Nail & hair salons
Cafes/restaurants/bars
Activities etc for children
Fresh produce - bakeries, butchers etc but NOT solely just extortionate ones targetting bouji customers, where the business owner is raking it in driving a porsche
Shops selling the things its hard to buy online - fragranced products, makeup etc where matching the colours with your skin is very hard on screen
Pharmacies, doctors, dentists, vets
Things its not worth delivery cost for that you sometimes need to get short notice - cards, stationery
Libraries

Things where you need/want to be there in person

The smart ones diversify. During Covid, a lot of the independent ladies fashion shops I buy from started doing Facebook videos. They gained a massive customer base geographically across the UK and beyond and still do it. A local one has an excellent webshop. I know not all business lend themselves to that though.

I walked into a bakery one day last week at 3.10pm and asked for a bowl of soup, only to be scowlingly informed that they "stop selling hot food at 3pm". Now how much bother would it have been to stick a bowl in the microwave? They weren't busy anyway. So we left and won't be back. A few doors up we found a lovely place where they couldn't have been nicer, the food was lovely and as they'd run out of bacon and DD wanted a pancake stack, someone went out and bought some bacon. I will definitely go back there!

Same round here. In particular there’s a small independent soft play which is really good but hardly ever open. It doesn’t have any business hours online, if you ask on Facebook they dodge the question, it seems to open according to whether the owner feels like it. On the days it does open it opens for about 3 hours. A few times we have turned up when it is allegedly open to find it closed. Tbh I won’t bother again