In the News: How does your business adapt to declining office worker traffic?

[Pesso]

Hey Sellers,

Today we’re looking at the effects of remote work, with an article from The Guardian reporting on how businesses are adapting as offices across the US stay empty. I’d love to hear your experiences with facing this shift.

The Guardian: US Offices are Sitting Empty – Business Owners will have to Adapt

The article explains that big cities are facing record highs of office vacancies, which is impacting businesses of all kinds in these areas. They quote reports of downtown small businesses seeing significantly lower traffic and having to close down. The article gives some suggestions to businesses in order to adapt. They range from simply moving to a non-city location, to starting new innovative businesses using more newly affordable real estate. Overall, they recommend that businesses relying on office workers to instead try new ideas to adapt to the changing economic landscape. 

Luckily, my shop was very much in a residential neighborhood, so we didn’t feel the same loss of customers from the shift to remote work. But because it was a more expensive neighborhood, we absolutely found that a lot of the people that lived there moved deeper into the suburbs into communities with lower real estate costs. If we were in a city and our business would have relied on office workers, the biggest thing we would have done was to try to expand our reach outside of our immediate area. Getting into the delivery game and opening up orders to further away from just the nearby offices would have been essential to keeping up sales.

What’s your perspective:

• Have you felt a decrease in sales as a result of remote work?

• What have you done, or can you do, to adapt and increase your business?

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
Pesso

[gduncan229]

If I'm being totally honest it's been good for us. I'm in the liquor business and with work from home it's kind of been a bit of "work while drinking" from home. I mean that's probably not what the businesses with offices want to hear, but I've seen a bit of that.

[Doran]

I've had the opposite experience.  With more work from home, I've had much more walk-in traffic.  The majority is from out of town and remote work.  Now that more people are returning to offices that traffic has dropped drastically.  I rarely get people in from San Francisco anymore and last year it was all that walked in.  

[PartyManiaMD]

I guess I get to chime in being in one of the few industries that didn't thrive or even survive Covid and the aftermath. With work from home and shopping online I fear for the party industry for a multitude of reasons. It isn't as simple as "adapting" and selling online because online sales has its' pitfalls. Loyalty evaporates when you're competing against mllions of other sellers and to be brutally honest certain products are not viable for online sales. You'll notice that even amazon avoids bulkier products or charges a premium on stuff like rolls of gift wrap because it's EXPENSIVE to ship said products.

I feel like news articles saying for business to adapt don't understand that for most businesses it's not that simple and even adapting has serious reprecussions from both an environmental point of view, tax revenue, and employment. 

Our store is in a once thriving downtown, now even the best restaurants are barely hanging in, many are closing, rent is going up when it should be going down, and there is LOTS of empty storefronts/restaurant shells. Our volume is still at HALF of what it was pre-covid even with adapting to online sales, a loyalty program, and discounting. 

They're putting up high rises but the high rises already up are sitting empty because no one can afford them, it feels like the city I'm in has become a ghost city where only the rich can afford to live regardless of how many luxury high rises they make.

Combine that with people "working" from home and then realize that companies that know their employees can work from anywhere will naturally gravitate towards low labor cost areas/countries and it's a recipe for disaster and no amount of adapting can correct this.

I just had a frank conversation with a customer complaining about our prices pointing out that our biggest competitor went into bankruptcy, cogs are going up, and that the door curtain she was paying $8.50 for is $10+ on amazon. She then had the audacity to ask for a discount.

I feel like a lot of the adapt to thrive and just spend more on marketing don't really understand or comprehend the struggles retailers or businesses in downtown areas are dealing with. It really comes off as both tone deaf and impractical because relocating stores or "just" competing online with companies that have 99.99% of the online market just doesn't make sense for most businesses.

To those that can actually adapt and thrive, cool I guess, but I can safely say it's going to be a much rockier ride for the rest of us.

[Lootz]

Unfortunately, this is not just a "Downtown" issue. This is widespread since the pandemic. I am in a suburban area outside the city with residential areas all around me. People learned to rely on the internet for things more than ever and order it online now. Small shops like mine cannot compete online with Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. In the year since I went online, I have had three customers for about 15 orders. It is hardly worth it to keep my online identity. My storefront carries the load...somewhat... but you can't even see my webpage until page 20+. Many folks say I need to work on my SEOs, but I have added all the data that Square/Google has fields for. Unless folks are searching for your store specifically, small businesses are not going to get the love online of a general search when they offer similar or the same products as those big guys. We have to flex on Facebook, Youtube, and the various chat applications as much as we can. Paper-printed media is also a big help for the local area, flyers, stickers, magnets, etc. Whatever you can do to keep your customers and potential customers thinking about your store instead of the online guys. 

[PartyManiaMD]

Yea unfortunately print media only works for some business types. For us paper print just doesn't generate the returns needed to offset the cost to mail them. Even email lists and text messaging is just recycling your current database, it doesn't generally bring in new foot traffic unless they share them. 

I honestly miss the days when groupon was hot because yea it was steep to offer the deals but the upfront cost was absorbed by them and they pretty much guaranteed results. Unfortunately nowadays you run a groupon and get zero sales, or even worse people in store see you have a groupon and you basically discount a sale you would have already gotten.

[Lootz]

We don't mail anything. I put small flyers (3x3) in bags, hand them to people at the grocery store, leave them on the tables when I go out to eat, leave one on the counter at the gas station, etc. I drop a "yard sale" style sign at a major intersection or stoplight with just our name on it pushing people to look us up. I joined all the Facebook groups in the area and make comments on posts or post to them directly (if allowed in the rules). My advertising budget is about $125 a month and that is stretching the number a bit and it all goes to Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram. I have two jobs and four kids. I have to think out of the box to cover the bills and keep everything afloat. We rely too much on paid advertising while often forgetting the basics. People like to relate to something. Make it relatable, make it fun, and make it yourself. Best of luck!

www.facebook.com/lootzcollectibles

[DLRosenberg]

Our business isn't dependent upon office workers. While we are located in a quaint downtown, there is little foot traffic. We have always relied on social media and making our location a destination. Luckily people are willing to travel for the products we offer. 

[Bronze_Palms]

Remote work is still moderately popular in my area and it fills up our mid-day appointments pretty well. People will sneak away to come in for services or complete services while they are required to listen to calls. It allows for a little more flexibility and our books stay full because of it. It used to be that the 3-8pm slots booked out very quickly. However, now, it is much more dispersed. 

[JUYBoutique20]

My business doesn't depend on office workers being remote or not, but what I have noticed is that having an online store has definitely been a game changer.  I feel like all retail businesses should have one.  I myself love to go into a shop but I do browse their website before I actually go in.