54: Open Late
What if shop opening hours reflected when you want to shop?
Much has been said over a number of years now about the future of retail in the digital age. Many have predicted its almost wholesale demise, and then been surprised by its resilience. There seems to be a view now that e-tailing will top out at a certain percentage of all retail sales meaning there will still be a place for bricks and mortar retail in our cities.
Currently it seems the trends around in-store retail are all about providing destination in-store experiences that are all about the tangible, physical, spatial, and sensory worlds that one doesn’t experience making purchases at home in bed or on the sofa.
This makes a lot of sense and points to the new reality that people now often need a good reason to head out to a store. So why do we make it so hard to do so with opening hours? They just don’t make any sense for most people most of the time. Particularly on weekdays, who is lining up to go to shops at 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning? Wouldn’t it make more sense to open later and shut later in the evening? This gives people with day jobs more of a chance to visit stores after work.
Interestingly, Melbourne is on to this. In April this year, it was announced that almost 100 stores in Melbourne’s central shopping precinct around Bourke Street Mall will now trade until at least 7pm every night, with late-night trading until 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays (for more there is a story in The Age here: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/cbd-to-go-global-with-extended-night-shopping-hours-20140406-366tg.html).
Interestingly, this is one area where the big shopping malls in Auckland’s suburbs appear to be already ahead of the game. Sylvia Park already matches these hours being adopted in Melbourne. So can we make this work in our primary street-based retail areas in the city centre, Newmarket and Ponsonby Road? Downtown there certainly seems plenty enough foot traffic on Queen Street of an evening to make this work. What about other locations?
Stuart Houghton 2014
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The Malls are ahead of the game because they can force their tenants to remain open for what ever hours the mall owner chooses. Queen Street shops are not bound by this as they are all owned by different landlords. They obviously do not think they can cover the staff wages by opening longer hours.
You are kidding, aren’t you? Do you really think that those who work in retail are going to get EXTRA money for working late. My employer already wants to introduce “flexible working”, which means that he can decide on a day to day basis whether I work or not. He can also decide which hours I work and if that’s mid-day to 8.00pm, then so be it. If it’s a quiet day, I can be sent home and not get paid. Because my contract says that I am full-time and the definition of full-time is someone who works at least 30 hours per week, then that’s all an employer needs to pay. And don’t forget that most retail staff are on minimum or close to minimum wage.
Legally you have to be paid for all of the hours that you work, if you are not then you should go to the employment tribunal and the business will probably be shut down.
Good incentive to upskill and find another job.
That old chestnut…
This is important from another, easily overlooked angle. Asian and American tourists visiting Auckland are used to shopping in the evening — they often venture out of their hotels after dinner to spend money and find nothing open.
There is a downside to this. Where I live, in Beach Haven, the bus frequency (the ONLY form of public transport) drops massively at around 7pm. We go from three or four buses an hour down to just one. For this to work, the evening bus frequency needs to be higher. Frankly it needs to be higher anyway.
right- so if the shops are open, more people will be travelling and it will be worth running the buses. Just like there are now more bus services on Saturdays than there used to be
Yes please!
So much common sense in this concept it shouldn’t even need to be voiced.
I loved 10:00 or 11:00-20:00 shopping when in Japan and would love the same here. Thing to remember is that someone has to staff the stores and though this could mean more job opps for students especially, it could also mean a lot of people working evenings away from family..
If only there was a large supply of students in the city looking for work outside of business hours. Oh, wait…
If only it was easy for employees to enter and exit the city centre off peak hours….
K-Mart is largely self-service now, and keeps its stores open til midnight every day. We could see other large retailers follow suit
Those shops that you implore be open – sure as likely ain’t in the CBD for most Aucklanders – don’t need that CRL to get there.
errr? really? great you prefer a mall in the ‘burbs, just don’t make the mistake of thinking that everybody does: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11358814
Yea i believe queen st has enough people walking late to open late. I am quite suprise the shops still don’t understand that. In hongkong shops closes midnight because most people shops after dinner.
Maybe a major shop or group has to be the leader and other shops will follow. Unfortunately nobody wants to take the lead.
Possibility our bus to city are not operating late enough.
Kelvin – “bus to city” – which city? – do you mean CBD ?
I actually think the consequences would be pretty disastrous for some of the reasons mentioned by others. On weekends it might be a good idea but during the week I’d rather it left as it is. Nobody ever really needs to buy a jumper at 10 pm on a Tuesday, that’s what weekends are for.
But some cool people in Melbourne think it is a good idea so we should copy it right? Yeah, nah.
I need to buy jumpres at 8-10pm on weekdays as I am usually working or away for leisure on the weekends.
I have probably been kicked out of shops 5 times this year at closing time. Hallensteins could have sold me a suit which on it’s own is enough to pay for a staff member for four hours.
There are a lot of assumptions and a hideous right-wing bias present here.
First, who is going to staff these shops? Low-skilled retail workers whose few hours of rest are now gone. Before they might get home at 6pm and have a few hours to watch TV or visit a friend, now they aren’t getting home until 9pm. Sure they get a couple more hours in the morning but they can’t use that for much but watching terrible infomercials.
Secondly, this just continues an attitude that favours late-risers. It is MUCH easier to get a bus into or from town at 10pm than it is to get one at 4am or 5am. The entire transport network is prejudiced against people who start early. One of the reasons so many people drive rather than use PT is that if you want to get to the gym by 6 or 6:30 it is almost impossible via PT.
Hideous right wing bias, ha! That’s a refreshing change for the usual ‘commie socialist freedom hater’ slurs leveled in these comments.
Anyway, who will staff them? Students. There are 30,000 tertiary students based in the City Centre, most of whom want low skill part time work outside business hours. I worked my way through uni in crappy restaurant jobs finishing up at midnight because that was the only thing I could do after 4pm, retail would have suited me better.
Reality favours late risers, at least if you count 4am as a typical early rise. Go into the city at 5am and it is the quiet earth. At 8pm there are still thousands of people around. Simple reality is people tend to work, study and be active during the day, and the tend to hang around after much more readily than get up early. I wish I could take the 5am bus today to get in a little shopping before work, said no one ever.
I agree we need to spread the span of service in both directions, but staying after work or uni is much more common than doing things before. Gyms are an obvious exception to that as people seem to like exercising first thing, and clearly gyms generally have very long opening hours to serve their customers better. Where is the wailing and gnashing of teeth for the poor low paid gym staff who are forced to watch infomercials in the afternoon because their shift starts at 6am?
It’s a lot easier to have a healthy sporting, home, family, and social life working 6-2 than it is working 12-8 (having worked both)
Maybe for you, but if I had to be getting ready for bed at 7.30pm I wouldn’t be able to make my exercise sessions, would have no social life and would find it very difficult to visit my family.
There are some hideous ageist biases in your assertion too.
Why would getting home at 9 rule out going to visit a friend or watching TV? That’s typically the time that I would be meeting up midweek for beers or dinner anyway.
Yeah funny how it’s fine for people who work in restaurants, bars, warehouses, hospitals, call centres etc to work in the evenings, weekends etc, yet somehow it’s tremendously cruel to expect people in retail to do that.
I agree there is a potential issue for people working long hours. Thats why our Labour law also need to have a maximum working hours per week for an employer, regardless part time or full time. Anything more than that is overtime and require extra hour pay and higher hour rate.
Quickly the shops will work out it is better to hire two people to shift than one people to work long hours.
Also that provide work opportunites for uni students.
Overseas this is common. It’s weird that people who work in the CBD and finish work at 5pm find shops closed when they hit Queen St etc. I have often thought of buying something after work like a new pair of shoes but the shops are closing up. A couple of shops like JBHi Fi and the Warehouse in the Downtown mall open beyond 5.30pm.
There is so much foot traffic between 5pm and 7pm, I don’t get why shops are closed and coffee bars finish up at 3.30pm or so.
Coffee bars close at ridiculous times in Auckland.
Agree. Extremely hard to find a good coffee in the weekend and after 15.00.
I started work in 1952 and feel that family life was much better then than it is now. I remember the introduction of the 5 day week with the late night Friday replacing the Saturday morning and feel that was a great move. I also remember the introduction of the Saturday trading again in the 80’s and the effect it had on sport organizations that I was involved in and the changes wrought by that move to the family life. The changes that lead to the average home in our area going from one bread winner to 2. The change was not good for the families or their children. I would love to be able to turn the clock back.
We certainly have a lot more opportunity to shop but less $’s to shop with and we can only spend that $ once. So in our community we only have so many $ to spend but now we have many more hours to spend it in. This leads us to become more like the American consumer society where “shopping” or going to the “mall” is a sport/hobby. Making us aware of all the things that might be nice to have but which we can’t really afford. Much more exposure to advertising which is showing is wants not needs. The sale of credit is very noticeable as well. This in turns leads to dissatisfaction with our lot.
I realize that the business premises had a much shorter working life. But they also had lower overheads for the same turnover (assuming the same $ can only be spent once).
I feel sorry for all those workers whose days are unpredictable and hourly rates so low that they are not receiving a wage from one job that enables them to support their family.
When the Rogernomic era was going on there was much talk about how overseas you could buy anything you wanted at any time of the day or night. But I later learned that that was not true and that in those countries it was true you wouldn’t want to be the one providing the service. It just wouldn’t be the Kiwi way of life. So now we are trying to win a race to a low wage peasant economy. It doesn’t make sense.
Join the union now and stop this race.
What if they had some way of linking your computer up to businesses computers so you could buy anything you want any time you want without leaving home! And what if you could buy stuff from overseas and avoid GST?
People would still want to shop locally most of the time.
Check your mall. Check Queen St.