News & Discussion: CBD Retail

[SRW]

I disagree completely! As a student I loved working on public holidays. As a full time wage slave, I hate that I have to schedule my scarce free time around arbitrary and mandatory trading hours. And finally, as a resident of a small city, I DO enjoy shopping in the major cities as a tourist.

This is not aimed at tourists from Paris. It is aimed at tourists from Port Lincoln and Alice Springs. Get over your cultural cringe.

When I worked in retail we had no problem filling night and weekend shifts with students. It was the 9-5 Mon-Fri shifts that were hard to fill. No one wants to work full time in retail these days.

This is the 21st century and people have a wide range of lifestyles. The retailers want to meet their customer's demands. If there's no demand then the shops wouldn't open. So where's the risk?

+infinity

As sad as it may be to some, the fact is that most people do not live a 9-5, Monday-Friday existence any longer. So long as necessary protections are in place, let people and business figure out for themselves when they want to work and shop or open and close.

[Mants]

I disagree completely! As a student I loved working on public holidays. As a full time wage slave, I hate that I have to schedule my scarce free time around arbitrary and mandatory trading hours. And finally, as a resident of a small city, I DO enjoy shopping in the major cities as a tourist.

This is not aimed at tourists from Paris. It is aimed at tourists from Port Lincoln and Alice Springs. Get over your cultural cringe.

When I worked in retail we had no problem filling night and weekend shifts with students. It was the 9-5 Mon-Fri shifts that were hard to fill. No one wants to work full time in retail these days.

This is the 21st century and people have a wide range of lifestyles. The retailers want to meet their customer's demands. If there's no demand then the shops wouldn't open. So where's the risk?

agreed, although, how many people would go clothes shopping on christmas day, good friday or anzac day?
these days should remain a time for families to be together.

[Omicron]

I'm a retail worker, and I'm all for relaxed trading hours. More opening hours = more opportunities for me to pick up work = more chance the shops will be open when I'm not working so I can buy things, too. Great stuff.

[AtD]

Are you a member of the SDA? They're probably the main thing blocking this.

[cruel_world00]

I disagree completely! As a student I loved working on public holidays. As a full time wage slave, I hate that I have to schedule my scarce free time around arbitrary and mandatory trading hours. And finally, as a resident of a small city, I DO enjoy shopping in the major cities as a tourist.

This is not aimed at tourists from Paris. It is aimed at tourists from Port Lincoln and Alice Springs. Get over your cultural cringe.

When I worked in retail we had no problem filling night and weekend shifts with students. It was the 9-5 Mon-Fri shifts that were hard to fill. No one wants to work full time in retail these days.

This is the 21st century and people have a wide range of lifestyles. The retailers want to meet their customer's demands. If there's no demand then the shops wouldn't open. So where's the risk?

agreed, although, how many people would go clothes shopping on christmas day, good friday or anzac day?
these days should remain a time for families to be together.

What about those who are family-less? International students staying in Adelaide over holidays? Younger tourists?

[pushbutton]

I am surprised at so many responses in favour of public holiday trading but there you go!

I just think considering there's only something like 12 public holidays a year surely we can manage without shops open for those few days.

It gives families and friends a nice excuse to do something together (other than shop).

[Waewick]

i'm that same

it amazes me the hype around 12 days a year of no shopping.

[Splashmo]

The shops are closed for 12 days a year? Far out. I work at a large store and the only days we're closed are Christmas Day and Good Friday. We're open on ANZAC Day in the afternoon.

Oh well, we get great business on public holidays and love it!

[Omicron]

Are you a member of the SDA? They're probably the main thing blocking this.

Way back when. I sent them an email cancelling my membership because I no longer agreed with most of what they stood for.

[cruel_world00]

I am surprised at so many responses in favour of public holiday trading but there you go!

I just think considering there's only something like 12 public holidays a year surely we can manage without shops open for those few days.

It gives families and friends a nice excuse to do something together (other than shop).

I'm not entirely PRO complete deregulation, but I am open to the idea that there are people out there, other than myself, who may want it. If the market wants it then I'm not against it. If not enough people want this kind of thing, the shops won't continue with it.

I think it's pretty narrow minded to say that everyone doesn't want to work and would like to spend those public holidays with their families. Different folks different strokes.

[Wayno]

Related to retail in the CBD:

From the Independent Weekly:

Adelaide: the new couture capital?

When it comes to haute couture, Paris burns and Adelaide yearns.

Colonel Light’s vision didn’t include an aesthetically challenged population of polar-fleece-flogging, chain-store-clad suburbanites.

But inside the four terraces, things are starting to change. Where relaxed and laid-back student chic once ruled the Mall, these days the square mile is anything but square as a burgeoning fashion revolution threatens to knock Melbourne off its high horse.

A group of discerning Adelaideans are taking matters into their own hands by launching high-concept couture labels coloured by international flavours. Their visions are different, but they share a common thread of unique, cutting-edge style.

The work is highly conceptual and specialised couture made the old-fashioned way – by hand. Yes, you heard right. Designers actually making things with their own hands. Who would have thought.

At a time when people are often disconnected from goods they use and consume, and in the middle of an economic downturn, it would seem foolish to embrace handmade production processes from the days of yore. Screen-printing, hand-beading and hand-stitching are hardly lynchpins of mass-production throwaway garb. Yet that’s exactly what makes this group of Adelaide’s finest stand out, both on the street and online.

The new local, crafty couturiers have a distinct advantage over the designers of yesteryear when it comes to marketing their brands – it’s called the internet. It’s made life a lot easier for many people, especially the couture rebels.

The relatively low start-up costs of maintaining a blog or social networking platform have helped bring the unorthodox visions of these creatives to the attention of their 20-something customers.

But sometimes a good old-fashioned retail space isn’t so bad for business either.

Alice Rawlinson, Julie White, Gemma Stocks and Lachlan Lang have invested in both the virtual and real worlds of retail. These emerging designers transformed a previously abandoned shopfront on Hindley Street into a fully functioning studio/retail space, aptly titled Work Shop, as part of the Renew Adelaide initiative.

Their respective labels – Divine Madness, Julie White, Petronella and P. Cock – are stocked exclusively in the store alongside handpicked vintage pieces. Social networking platforms are used to inform customers of new collections and events at the store, rather than just functioning as a space for buying and selling.

Rawlinson recently showed her latest Divine Madness collection to a packed house of local fashionistas and bloggers at the Hotel Richmond as part of the Red Carpet Fridays initiative, which aims to foster local emerging design talent on the first Friday of every month.

Another example of an Adelaidean breaking couture boundaries is Matea Gluscevic, who has a taste for unconventional, high-concept shoe design. The emerging shoe designer says she is compelled to “make stuff” and produces her one-off shoes entirely by hand. In a market saturated with sloppy design and unethical manufacturing, Gluscevic intends to take her burgeoning shoe business back to basics.

“If I started manufacturing shoes overseas, I would be just like every other shoe designer,” she says. “It’s important to make shoes by hand so you really have an understanding of how they’re made.”

Together with make-up artist Sally Axford, Gluscevic facilitates a successful fashion blog monitoring the pair’s work-in-progress and inspirations, which also serves as a platform to showcase her shoe designs to an international clientele.

Adelaide is not just opening up to avant-garde ideas, but is also beginning to embrace niche market design. Joy Taylor sustains an international clientele through online social media with her 1950s-inspired fashion label Hot Couture. It is a worldwide success, thanks to her fastidious choice of quality fabrics and early adoption of social networking through MySpace and Facebook.

“I really love the ’50s, but patterns from that era are literally falling apart, so I decided to modify them to suit the modern body shape,” Taylor says. “I’m really fussy about choosing fabrics – it’s not called Hot Couture for no reason!”

Taylor is content for now with selling most of her designs through her website and online social networking.

“Facebook has been a really effective way to spread the word and show potential customers the latest designs,” she says.

Her designs are also available in retail spaces such as conceptual hair salon DAS on Ebenezer Place, which started stocking Hot Couture alongside several other independent Australian labels.

Adelaide – murder and couture capital of Australia. Who knew?

[Waewick]

I am surprised at so many responses in favour of public holiday trading but there you go!

I just think considering there's only something like 12 public holidays a year surely we can manage without shops open for those few days.

It gives families and friends a nice excuse to do something together (other than shop).

I'm not entirely PRO complete deregulation, but I am open to the idea that there are people out there, other than myself, who may want it. If the market wants it then I'm not against it. If not enough people want this kind of thing, the shops won't continue with it.

I think it's pretty narrow minded to say that everyone doesn't want to work and would like to spend those public holidays with their families. Different folks different strokes.

equally so it is extremely niave to suggest that if the days are approved a number of workers will end up working those days who don't want to, they are the people that I feel for when people start banging on for shopping every day of the year.

[bm7500]

I don’t know who wrote that Independent Weekly article but that that last line is just unnecessary garbage.

[cruel_world00]

I am surprised at so many responses in favour of public holiday trading but there you go!

I just think considering there's only something like 12 public holidays a year surely we can manage without shops open for those few days.

It gives families and friends a nice excuse to do something together (other than shop).

I'm not entirely PRO complete deregulation, but I am open to the idea that there are people out there, other than myself, who may want it. If the market wants it then I'm not against it. If not enough people want this kind of thing, the shops won't continue with it.

I think it's pretty narrow minded to say that everyone doesn't want to work and would like to spend those public holidays with their families. Different folks different strokes.

equally so it is extremely niave to suggest that if the days are approved a number of workers will end up working those days who don't want to, they are the people that I feel for when people start banging on for shopping every day of the year.

You do not have to work public holidays if you don't want to. It was similar to when Sunday trading came in. Staff who didn't want to never had to work the Sunday. They would also avoid doing so because once you did a Sunday shift, you could open the flood gates to being rostered on future Sundays.

[Ben]

Please keep this thread on topic. This thread is about new stores and retial developments. Keep other stuff to the pub.