By breaking your refurbishment, property maintenance and upgrade work into phases, scheduling as much work to take place after closing time and during off-peak hours, and clearly communicating your plans, you can upgrade your shop without losing customers.
As US President John F. Kennedy is said to have espoused, the best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. In the context of retail, this would suggest that both literal good weather and positive economic reports are not times for shopowners to rest on their laurels!
With unexpectedly positive news for the retail sector at a time when analysts were bracing for the market to fall thanks to the heatwave, here are some of the best ways to ensure that your refurbishments do not get in the way of making hay whilst the sun is shining.
Schedule Work Out Of Hours
The best way to avoid downtime is to simply work with your maintenance partners to ensure that vital scheduled work is undertaken during off-peak times or when the store is closed entirely.
Scheduling work at night or early in the morning helps to keep the business moving and ensures that the customer experience is minimally affected.
If a store is open 24 hours a day or has especially long working hours, schedule the work to take place at off-peak times when fewer customers will be visiting.
Phase Upgrades
Another step to this is to break down significant refurbishment and upgrade tasks into stages that can be undertaken with as little disruption as possible.
This can include breaking down work into manageable chunks that can be undertaken outside of work hours, sectioning work off into zones which allows for at least some of the shop to be open at any given time, or a combination of the two.
Plan To Minimise Disruption
If you know you are going to have maintenance work taking place during opening hours, lay your shop around this fact. Move product away from affected areas, section off the repairs in an attractive way and avoid drawing attention to the repairs.