SHOPFLOOR ANALYSIS | Opening hours
Deciding on the optimum opening hours can be tricky. Getting a happy medium between a good work-life balance for staff and not missing out on business is key. Toby Griffin looks at how some KBB retailers have tackled this
reduced, phased and appoint- ment-only opening allowed, it gave many bricks-and-mortar KBB retailers time to consider their ways of working, and whether their previous opening hours and days were appropriate, needed or even desirable. Following the pandemic, like many retailers the managing director of
W 42
ith showrooms having to close during the pandemic, followed by
East-Sussex-based kitchen special- ist Jones-Britain, Dan Stronge, decided to open one day fewer each week, citing a better work-life balance as the driving force behind the decision. “I feel more effective at the showroom now,” he says. “And I perform better as a result.”
So with examples of amended, flexible and, often unchanged patterns of opening across the UK’s KBB showroom network, it seemed worth taking a deeper look at the
pros and cons of each approach. As always seems to be a good starting point for such analyses, I took a poll of my KBB retailer connections on LinkedIn, asking ‘which days of the week do you open your KBB retail business?’ The results saw a broad spread of answers, with 31% saying they open seven days a week, 49% opening Monday to Saturday, 16% opening Monday to Friday, and 4% working on an appointment-only basis.
On the understanding then that opening Monday to Friday is almost a given, working weekends seems to be the main variable among retailers. As the most contentious ‘working’
day, let’s start with Sundays. The Shops Act (1950) officially
regulated Sunday shopping hours in England and Wales, making it illegal for shops to sell most products on that day. Margaret Thatcher’s government sought to abolish this, and introduced the Shops Bill to
· October 2022
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