This Episode:​ The Best Store Hours For Independent Retailers
In this episode of Real Retail TV, I share what I believe to be the best store hours for independent retailers. This has been a bit of a controversial topic in our WhizBang! Retailer’s Facebook group lately. The bottom line is, if you want to be competitive with the big box stores, you have to keep the same hours as they do. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for your customers to shop when they want to shop.
What’s your opinion on store hours? I would love to hear it in the comments.
At RSS 2022 I shared how to use a locker system just like the bigger guys use to offer 24/7 pick up.. You can do this with reasonably priced a set of lockers and individual padlocks with passwords that can be easily changed. Make sure lockers are weather proof for the area you place them and that the area is safe and well lighted.
Thanks for your input, Anne!
Many years ago I was at a trade show. The speaker was saying that almost all of our customers were female. And naturally many women work these days. So if we closed our store at 5:00 most of our customers were just getting off work, and couldn’t patronize our store! I went home after that show and IMMEDIATELY changed my hours. Been open 10 to 6 Monday-Wednesday, and till 7 on Thursday and Friday. Saturday I stay open till 4:00 as most folks here travel an hour away where we have a large mall, Wal-Mart, etc. But in my industry stores close on Sunday. I’m a religious bookstore, and my customers are in church on Sunday. I would stay open later during the week, but I’m a one person show. But Bob does make a point when he says consistency is the key.
Thanks for your comment, Wendy! You get it!
Yes, yes, yes! Only a few of my neighbors are open on Sundays, and I’m almost the only one open 7 days a week, till 6 on weekdays. If I had a dollar for every time someone thanked me for being open because they needed a gift, I could retire early! 😉 After seeing this, I’m considering staying open until 7 on Thursdays and Fridays. I tried it early on when I worked alone but now I have a reliable employee so it might just work!
Thanks for your comment, Laura. Congrats on taking good care of your customers! Let us know how your later hours work!
We are open 10-5 M-F and 10-4 Saturdays. Closed on Sunday. We are in a strip mall with mixed business and retail renters. We’ve discovered over the years that Sunday was a day we needed to rest and there are no other stores in our mall that are open on Sunday. We felt it was not safe to be the only store open with no one nearby. Our discovery has been that once the workers go home in the evening to fix dinner and relax, they put on their jammies and do not come back out and it was costing us a lot of extra employee hours with no shoppers. Remember, Washington state has one of the highest hourly rates of pay for employees and now overtime pay also. Just recently we have been talking about lengthening our day to 5:30, as we have had customers coming in around 5 as we were preparing to close.
Thanks for your perspective, Linda. Keep testing and asking… what do my customers want and need so they can become loyal fans? Location is huge. Are you in the right one?
We took your advice years ago and it’s one of the smartest things we have done for our business! THANK YOU! Sundays are fun, fast and PROFITABLE!
Christina, you GET IT! Thanks for the comment!
Sunday is our busiest day of the week. I need 4 team members to handle the amount of customers that we serve on Sundays. I am thinking about staying open later on Sundays, since many customers come in right before closing. For 24 years, we have been open on Sunday from 11am-6pm for consistency. Is it better to stay consistent or stay later?
Congrats on 24 years of great service. It’s never a bad idea to stay open later if your customers are supporting you for longer days. If your customers like to shop on Sunday evenings, take advantage of the opportunity! Adding longer hours on a weekend won’t leave a negative impression. It’s closing early and unpredictably that will get you a bad rep.
It’s about serving your customers, but it’s also about ‘fitting in’ to your surroundings! We’re in the heart of our downtown. We’ve changed our hours since we first opened 25 years ago, when we were open late until 8:00, as were many of the businesses around us. When our neighboring book store, which was a big traffic center closed several years ago, most of the neighborhood reduced hours, closing at 5:00, except for bars & restaurants. We chose to stay open until 6:00, to accommodate the after work shopper, but have found that most of those gals stop in over lunch hour! I will add that this year, for the first time ever, we closed on Sunday and at 5:00 for the month of January. It is taking a long time to remind our customers that we are back to regular hours!!!
6 pm does not seem late enough to get out of work and get to a store during weekdays. I was always irritated that everything closed so early in my town and I had a hard time shopping. So, when we opened 18 years ago, I decided 7 pm and we have always stuck with that. It does mean we need 2 shifts a day; it is too long of a day for any employee to work open to close. Our busiest time is the lunch hour and post work during the week. And, we are open 7 days. Sunday is our shortest day with hours of noon to 6 pm. The average ticket is much higher on Sundays as people will hang out longer. We have a website and people can order 24/7 and get delivery, too. If I *had* to close a day a week, I’d pick Monday. We have changed our hours once in the 18 years (from 9 am open to 10 am), but nobody seemed to mind that change. It makes the opener able to be scheduled through some of the post-work rush.
Nice job reading your customers, Cyndi. You’ve balanced WWMCW with your business strategy, congrats!
You make a good point about the downside of changing hours. What would it take to collaborate with and inspire more surrounding businesses to stay open later? Thanks for the comment, Cathy.
Bob,
Right on point everything has to be about serving your customers, the hours, the music in your store, the temperature in your store, etc. It is all about the customer not about YOU.
Right on, Neil!