Author: Mark Fletcher

Westfield Knox, today at lunchtime, usually the busiest time of a Monday.

In a move that it says is designed to help the community, News Corp. has removed the paywall for its mastheads for the next 28 days. I wonder if the move is more about getting more people to taste their wares before they offer a sweet post-corona deal to stay inside a paywall. Or, maybe, it is about broadening the reach of their mainly ignorant opinion writers who yell nonsense daily. Or, maybe, it is neither and purely innocent.

Black Dog reached out Friday and provided some terrific resources for the times:

1. Managing anxiety in times like these.
2. Advice for reassuring children and young people in the current situation.

While they are not the only service providing resources, they are succinct and timely.

Older customers, 70+, male and female, are the cohort most likely to ignore social distancing requirements laid out by government in their coronavirus response according to retailers.

Older customers are more likely to shop in groups, cluster with too many in a limited space, touch others in the business, want to stand still for a talk and mock moves being taken by the government to flatten the coronavirus infection curve.

I have been hearing this all week from newsagents and other retailers across the country in one on one conversations and in video conferences with groups of retailers. Retailers are frustrated, and they feel helpless to fix the problem.

One retailer talked about two grandparents coming into a small shop with two grandkids.

Another told me about an old customer who reached across the counter and patted a staff member on their arm saying it’s nothing to worry about.

Another retailer tells of two older male shoppers saying that social distancing is for sissys.

Plenty said that in their experience the older customers are less like to take the coronavirus risk seriously.

With my newsXpress group we have a daily video conference meeting and with my Tower Systems POS software retailer business customers we have a video conference every few days. It is these coronavirus related meetings to discuss business conditions and encourage each other where I have heard about the problem withholder shoppers.

How some older people are behaving is a challenge for all retailers and those who work in retail. While not the same as the health workers helping those with this illness, those who work in retail face a considerable challenge every day with their safety very much in the hands of customers and their behaviour.

Retailers are protecting employees with gloves, hand sanitiser and good, safe, practices. They have floor and other markings to guide social distancing. Some I know are installing perspex partitions to create a better distance between staff and customers to reduce the opportunity for droplets to pass.

The challenge remains how to deal with older customers as they represent the cohort causing the most difficulties. 

I think our communication needs to be clear and consistent – at the front of the store, in-store and on social media. we need to be vigilant at front of store, controlling shop entry and being firm to stop people if they present a risk because of the number in the group or because of their behaviour. We need to be prepared to ask people to leave if their in-store behaviour is inappropriate.

I appreciate some here may say this is overkill. Of course, I disagree. These are unique and challenging times. We need to provide a safe workplace for all who work in our businesses and for those who shop with us. Anyone who puts this at risk needs to leave the business.

Here is a message I put on social media this morning to address this issue:

Here are some tips for your consideration should your retail business be designated an essential business in the looming lockdown. We hope they are useful:

At some point, retailers around you will be shut down for a time. If you are designated essential, the move will see affected retailers possibly upset at your favoured treatment for the newsagency channel, upset at you that you are open.

Your focus needs to be on how to adjust your business to the changing conditions. That does not mean going all out to rake in as much cash as possible. Rather, our advice is that you modestly adjust the business to serve the needs of locals. Those shop permitted to remain open could serve broader needs through this time

Look around and plan now for modest moves you could make to broaden the appeal of the business. Our advice is that you focus on categories you are already in – but with an expanded range, or products that fit with categories you already serve today.

We think stores remaining open need to make significant shop floor moves, to reflect the needs of the tougher circumstances and to demonstrate your respect for these as well as the wellbeing of shoppers and your team.

1. Change your shop to look different. You are moving from open and competitive retail to special circumstance retail, essential service retail – there is a big difference. Making your shop look fundamentally different is very important.
2. Create more space for shoppers to move around safely. Consider policing at the door how many enter.
3. If appropriate, consider and entrance and an exit.
4. Move destination products to the front of the shop.
5. Pitch popular products at the counter. 
6. Reset the counter. De-clutter. Keep essentials there. Have a thoughtfully selected range of impulse items. but, again, do not clutter the counter.
7. Cashless. We urge you to encourage customers to pay by a card.  Click here for advice on how to safely remove hand gloves.
8. Staff safety. We urge you to provide staff with gloves and the request they are changed every hour and that the outside of the gloves are regularly hand sanitised.
9. Make the counter safer. Consider installing a perspex counter to further protect.
10. Hand sanitiser freely available.

From the Minister for Planning and Public Spaces:

Small land lords time to shine

COSBOA has profoundly congratulated those small landlords around the country who have already cut their rent or in some cases stopped rent for businesses who have no income due to the COVID-19 crisis. We call upon all the small landlords around the country to do what they can for others in distress.

Peter Strong, CEO of COSBOA, stated ‘small landlords are often small business people or families who have invested in property and have rented out to others either as commercial or as residential leases. These landlords may also be experiencing the difficulties of hard times, particularly for those whose income is inextricably linked to the property they lease, such as retired people. Yet, with the announcement from the banks that there is no need for loan repayments for small businesses borrowers for the next 6 months there is an opportunity to pass this saving onto tenants.”

COSBOA knows the pain and anguish suffered by businesses who have no income yet have rent and often wages to pay. Landlords will not benefit from bankrupted business tenants. COSBOA knows that the employees of small businesses are often valued like family and they must be considered for rent relief by residential landlords as their tenant may now be on a lower income, without a job and trying to be ‘Centrelinked’ but are having trouble due to the overwhelming of the MyGov system.

Mr Strong added “it is imperative for every small landlord with a bank loan to contact their bank and get the loan repayment holiday if they are eligible. Then immediately pass that onto their tenants.’

Mr Strong added “any small landlord who takes the loan holiday and then doesn’t pass on that saving to the tenants would be a failure as a person and as a member of our society. The biggest landlords, such as Westfields, Stocklands and the Scentre Group, have shown they are the lowest members of the big business community with their callous callow response to the needs of struggling and closing small business retailers. The small landlords will be no different if they were not to pass on the saving.”

Note for tenants: Not all landlords have loans from banks and may not receive the repayment holiday and may not be able to pass on any savings. Check with your landlord and ask if they have sought to take advantage of the bank repayment hiatus.