Late night shopping begins at Saleufi

By Elizabeth Ah-Hi 20 April 2018, 12:00AM

Retail stores in Saleufi are now offering the option for late night shopping every Thursday of the week.

The group of business owners behind the effort want to cater to those busy professionals trying to strike a balance between work, family and leisure.

Now they won’t have to rush during their lunch hour to fit in shopping instead they can shop at their own leisure after work.

Having late hours at least once a week makes good business sense according to Georgina Lui, who along with Anna Brown, Iva Chan Chui and Jenny Pupi are pushing the new extended hours.

“I think it’s time for us to move into this and extend our shopping hours because it’s quite limited being open from 8-5pm as a clothing store when you look at all the supermarkets they are open 6am-10pm at night,” she said.

“If people are coming out for grocery shopping at the time, they might still want to go shopping for clothes up until 8pm so we are just trialling it out till 8pm and since Big Bear have had their late nights going on for a while, we thought we would align it with their days as well.”

The C.C.K retail store has only recently moved into Saleufi and Ms. Lui said that when they relocated she was approached by her landlord Anna Brown about collaborating a late night with other businesses on the street after she realized the potential for a strip mall of clothing shops to provide late night shopping. 

“When we moved in here, our landlord next door, Anna Brown was really excited that C.C.K was opening up on this street. She said we should start having a late night and her vision was for us to have a night market and close off the whole street but I believe some of the other store owners went to the L.T.A and we weren’t able to do that so she said let’s have late night.”

Commencing their new extended hours this week, Ms Lui said the response was positive and they are hoping that eventually other retail stores will jump on board. 

“Once we get going, we hope to invite a few other people who have stalls that can open up along the street because they can open up in front of our stores just to make it a little bit more festive.”

Currently their main challenge has been the lighting on their street which makes it both a safety and security issue for business owners and customers alike. However for the retail shop owners on the streets, the benefits far outweigh the minor challenges.

“We need to ask E.P.C to put some street lights in because the street at night time is so dark, you can’t see a thing. However the response has been good and some people have said to us “thank goodness’”

“During the day anywhere you want to park in this town is hard. But if you can come in at night time there’s less traffic to get in here, easier parking and its nice and cool to walk around. It’s peaceful and you can shop at your own pace.

“Also let’s not forget that sometimes it’s just nice to just take some ‘me time’ just to hang out and shop and do something that you want to do and we don’t really get the opportunity to do that unless we go overseas and shop at the malls.”

The participating shops are Head to Toes, C.C.K, Nie’das, Kilo’s Shack, Emmareze, Mercy Shop Kiddies, and Le Fale Ink and Fabrics. They will remain open till 8pm every Thursday of the week.

By Elizabeth Ah-Hi 20 April 2018, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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