\nIf\n you look at businesses in New Zealand, you will see that a lot of them \nclose down for the two weeks of Christmas and New Year. With two public \nholiday days in each week, by the time you start things up again you \nhave to shut them down, so better to be closed for the whole two week \nblock and be done with it. But we live in an age of 24-7 sales where \nbusiness doors are only closed when they have to be, and their websites \nrun non-stop. Now you might be one of those businesses, and even if you \nare not, you still might be on call for clients. Which is fine, but if \nthe other business that supply you the things you need are closed down \nfor that period, that might leave you in a lurch. So we are going to \ndiscuss a few ideas of how you can prepare both yourself and clients for\n the great NZ Summer Holiday<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Depending\n on the nature of your business, it might make more economic sense to be\n fully closed than to pay some staff to be there doing nothing. If you \nare in a trade, you\u2019re considered to be on call 24-7, the customer is \nnot concerned if you want to spend time with your family, so would pay \nto make up a roster of people who could be on call for work, and just \ngive them time in lieu or extra pay if they do have to go on site. Post \nthe two week shut down, you might find that you have lower than normal \ndemand so running a lighter team to deal with the first couple of weeks \ncould make a lot of sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This\n is a big one. People are more forgiving if you are going to closed, not\n able to do certain types of work, or will be slower than normal due to \nhaving less staff, if they know ahead of schedule. No one is more \nunhappy than a customer who tries to reach you only to find out that \nyou\u2019re not answering their calls because you\u2019re closed. How you do this \ndepends on the nature of the business. At a minimum put the information \nin as part of your email signature and setup an automated out of office \nreply that spells it out to them. Likewise put it on your voicemail \nsystem. As you will have a website you should have a popup or special \nmessage as soon as people land there to inform them of the changes in \nyour operational routine. If you have a newsletter, make sure you have \nthe information in that. Then there are signs on the business\u2019s door, \nand even having small notices you can put with your normal paperwork. \nThe key thing is to forewarn them, so they can plan their operations \naround you just like you have to plan your operation around your \nbusiness partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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If\n you are reliant on materials or products to run your business then is \nimportant to have stocked up to cover your needs before the suppliers \nclose. And we are not just talking about the time they are physically \nclosed. Often suppliers will have supply chain hiccups or higher than \nnormal demand in the weeks after they reopen. This can lead to them \nrunning out of supplies and having long lead times before they get more \nin. All of which can directly affect your ability to operate as a \nbusiness. So calculate the stock you need, nor for just the Great NZ \nSummer Holiday, but for the rest of the month of January and order it in\n December before they close. It may well be the case you don\u2019t need it \nthere and then but you\u2019ll use it in the end and better that to miss out \nincome because you don\u2019t have supplies on hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Often\n business are on a go slow as they are recovering from those two weeks \noff. It doesn\u2019t help you keep your own profits up as the work dries up. \nYou can get counteract this to a degree by offering incentives to \nprebook work in January. It has the advantage they can get things \napproved\/prepaid before they shut things up for the year, and you get \nthe guaranteed income to help cover the lean month of January. If your \nbusiness isn\u2019t able to pre book things, then plan sales and promotions \nthat you can run during that period. Order marking material and arrange \nit to be delivered when you need it even if it\u2019s printed months before. \nOnline promotions are great for this period, as they have low setup \ncosts meaning that even if you only get a very small number of sales \nfrom it, it will more than cover the costs of running it and it helps \nkeep your business ticking over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This\n is one that most people miss. You can never quite predict how demand is\n going to be during the Great NZ Summer Holiday. While you can make \neducated guesses, the fact that people are on holiday means that things \nare always up in the air. Countless factors like, competing businesses, \nthe weather, what has been the trendy gifts for christmas, big \nentertainment and sporting events, even the cost of petrol can all have \nan effect on what people do during that period. So build slack into your\n plans. What the slack you need depends on the nature of your business \nbut here\u2019s a few common ones. Have the ability to have staff on call to \ncome in at short notice if you have unexpected demand. If you\u2019ve stocked\n up supplies for the month beforehand then you have the flexibility you \nneed there. Design some generic promotions that you can roll out quickly\n if the competition is doing things, even if it\u2019s just on your website \nor facebook page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of\n course there are more things you can do to prepare for the Great NZ \nSummer Holiday. If you would like advice on what you need to do, then \nwhy not book time with us at Copy Express or our sister company Fuel \nAccounting to find out more<\/em><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you look at businesses in New Zealand, you will see that a lot of them close down for the two weeks of Christmas and New Year. With two public holiday days in each week, by the time you start things up again you have to shut them down, so better to be closed for … Continue reading “Dealing with the Great NZ Summer Holiday”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":928,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}