Further to my post last week about opportunities for regional newsagents, there have been several media reports over the last few days about businesses making these moves, long term committing to work from home and quitting plans for city based office facilities.
- UK Capita to close a third of offices. Plenty from this company’s 45,000 strong work force will not have to return to an office.
- Pinterest cancels plans for a large new office.
- Aussie tech giant Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever.
- Guardian Australia on offices in cities closing.
- The Conversation looks at management decision making on work from home.
- SmartCompany calls for small businesses to consider a permanent move to work from home.
- And, related: The NBN and working from home.
A quick search will deliver access to more reports like these.
Businesses, especially office based businesses, are looking at how and where their people work. This is where opportunities for newsagents emerge.
I do think there is a new niche of products and services regional newsagents can offer to facilitate relevance in these emerging opportunities.
I think the regional benefit might be muted. Persons home working will be tech savvy, they will be on line consumers, price will drive their choice, delivery will be within 24 hours.
The downside for CBDs could be deadly for the small businesses that feed off business districts.
The UK is very concerned about the latter. There is a real danger that business districts become ghost towns.
If the home working trend, does become the norm, we can expect a shedding of labour as firms restructure to take advantage of the available efficiencies.
Yes there may be opportunities arising, but they will be more than outweighed by the losses from restructuring and habit changing working from home inevitably leads to.
I disagree Colin and I do so now having had the opportunity to see data from a range of regional businesses serving people who are working from home.
There has been growth in service provision, stationery, food, home office furniture and more. Plus, is a couple of instances, growth in facilitating tech support because there are non tech savvy people making the move.
It will be whatever it is. My poi nt is that already there is evidence that it is good for regional businesses.
It is particulary good for what I call “satellite Towns”
Towns that are within say 40 minutes drive time from Regional Centres.
Once such Town is Werris Creek 25 mins from Tamworth.
Werris Creek had a receeding poulation from peak of 1.800 about 1,200 the residential population started to grow with younger families buying cheaper housing renovating or building as both were cheaper than Town
The locals pharmacy used their 300 sq. metres to take advantage of this.
I was so impressed and tought newsagents could do the same I did a story and video on te store ans Town it’s on our web page under Success or Blog.This was a couple years before COVID however very successful. Mind you the satellite towns do cannibalise te Regional Town a tad for everyday stuff howver this depends upon the operator and what space they can convert.
Opportunities are there as Mark points out.
Newsagents are just as part of the Community as Chemists so no reason they can’t join a group and do the same.
The opportunities for regional newsagents is very real with the move from the city very evident in towns like my own on the South Coast of NSW. All retailers and businesses in town are benefiting and like Mark says the winds of change are bringing other opportunities. We have experienced strong year on year sales growth since the beginning of June. Colin I tend to think that that the improvements in technology and the increasing trend to work away from the office is providing huge productivity gains for many businesses.
Don’t disagree with any of your comments, but consider the broader picture.
The current sales figures reflect the knee jerk reactions to the pandemic. They do not reflect plans thought out in advance. The numbers reflect what people had to do to keep working in extraordinary circumstances.
12 years ago I worked in London in an international law firm, In many respects they had grasped the opportunities of home working. Lawyers had blackberries, practice management systems and through programs such as citrix could access and work on files from anywhere in the world. The firm operated in every time zone. Some lawyers didn’t visit their “home” office in weeks yet remained key members of teams. Many partners were not seen in their home office for months at a time. It was a truly international business …12 years ago !!
What is my point ? The point is that for most firms covid has lead to short tern solutions to what may be a long term issue. When firms turn their thoughts to long term home working, it will be nothing like the current model. It will mean restructuring on a massive scale.
It is not yet apparent who will gain and who will lose.
Colin, the end result is not exact as you say however there is no denial in that the result will be very different than the past every day performances of business re location and access is conconcerned.
For some time it is accepted that home stay with certain personel will need Office meetings at a Central point. This over time may shrink or enlarge. It won’t necessarilary change space allocation or rentals once they have be adjusted.
This is very much applicable to the Country Regional Centres and the Towns close by of which I refer to in my post.
Steve makes a similar point and this would be emphaside in his sales categoryy increases. Stationery – Home dweller increase Gifts Magazines and newspers a tad the same but majority weekend tourists as thsi area 1.5 hrs from Sydney and the Sothern Highlands -booming I have broken up the sales patterns in some of these areas and a sample of the rural areas plus the coastal areas of more than a days return drive from Sydney and found differences yet improvement overall
One situation does not fit all it is a case or cases by case situation.
The good part is some Country newsagent have opportunity outside of their Town’s natural economy through tourism and others through using the economy, catering for the increase in the schooling and family housing affordalbiliy from the regional centre close by.
Colin the advances and improvements I am seeing in technology over the last 12 mths is at the fastest pace I have seen in over 30 years. Documents are now being digitally signed and stored in the cloud, video meetings are now being held via Teams and Zoom, training and CPD is being conducted via webinars, staff are communicating via chat messaging in Teams and all software and files are cloud based.All of this technology improvement combined with the short term solutions required by business to minimise the effects of COVID lockdowns and social distancing requirements is reducing the need for expensive city based office space, city traffic congestion and travelling times and fuelling the growth and opportunities in the regions. I strongly believe this will be a long term trend.
Graeme as you say the international border closures are also fuelling tourism based growth in towns such as ours with our 2020 July monthly sales comparable to our usual January holiday takings (despite reduced post COVID operating hours) This growth may be more short term though I can’t see the borders opening any time soon and certainly not until a vaccine is developed and available.
All the technology to work remotely at this level has been around for over a decade, it’s just taken a pandemic to finally force a lot of employers and non-tertiary educators to use it. Internet access was an issue holding it back in some places but the monstrosity that is the NBN is sufficient enough now for a lot more to work remotely.
The increased uptake of remote working and learning is at least one positive from a bad situation.
We are 6 months in. In many businesses, that is enough time for considered response. I think that is why we are seeing commercial office leases not renewed, greater interest in shared locations and a strong employee-driven interest in working from home.
In terms of tech and in the rate of adoption of tech, there have been changes this year that have made working from home more accessible.
Sure, some changes will not stick, however, plenty will … and that is good news for regional businesses, including newsagents.