Sundays used to be a power day in the retail week. No longer it seems – not just based on data from my newsagencies but many I speak with, data from the last three months. Sunday trade is down this year while other days are up (Thursday and Friday).
The problem with the drop in Sunday day trade is that it’s the most expensive day of the week to be open. This is why most newsagents who have a choice, those not in major shopping centres, choose to not open.
We use the day to get work done which would otherwise be done during the week and make labour savings there. We need to do more though to make the day work. We’re contemplating Sunday offers and other tactics to make the day work better for us. They will focus on the higher margin products as it’s these which will pay the high operating costs.
our sundays are quite but we find tuesdays are worst we have thought of doing something to get customers in that day but wondered if it might take them from other days
Very intereseted in seeing ideas to improve sunday trade , for us it is not worth opening but we do it to keep our week day customers on board
Same here Shaun…only open as a courtesy thing really. Maybe if we got paid to check lotto tickets it would be worth our while. LOL
Cheers
Al
We’re on a strip shopping centre with a lot of grocery stores, take aways, and restaurants. The restaurants cater primarily for night dining so it doesn’t bring much, if any, traffic to the centre during the day.
Some of the take aways close up during the day on the Sunday. The grocery stores are the only stores that open on this day.
We open til 12pm and are now looking at closer sooner – say 10am, like our neigbour newsagencies around us who have been doing this for a long time.
We’ve noticed that the sales on Sunday have really stayed constant but the timing of the sales is what I’ve noticed. Sales tend to die off after 11am after all the early morning walkers, church goers, etc.
With the new ‘modern award wages’ coming out. It will definitely be the case that we will have to close sooner as it will only be a service to open for the newspapers…
This just means that I have more time for recreational activities … finally a break! Maybe that’s what newsagents need?
Being a newsagency, Post office and General store in a small coastal town I have noticed Sunday trade after 11ish is sluggish however the fact I am not just a newsagency and that I am the only store in town I choose to stay open until 4pm on Sundays while sales are steady it is a good chance to check my stock, get some paperwork done and do odd jobs I dont seem to get a chance during the week.
I will imagine however this Sunday being Anzac day it will be a very quiet Sunday