Getting Your Store Ready for Re-Opening

The time is nearly upon us. More and more stores are re-opening here in the UK. Many non-essential businesses re-opened their doors on 15th June and many will be doing so too on the 4th July. As the United Kingdom attempts to rehabilitate the country’s economy, following the Coronavirus outbreak that led to a global pandemic, many business owners have been left scratching their heads. How can they prepare to welcome customers back into their stores, when they aren’t sure quite how to safeguard themselves, their staff and their customers.

We previously touched on this in our blog post ‘How GottaBe! Adapted To Survive The COVID-19 Pandemic‘ and today we wanted to explore this further, especially as the government will be allowing retailers to trade for longer hours than those normally permitted. This revised regulation is in a bid to help the high street stabilise following the lockdown. There are many resources out there online from other brands, businesses and agencies advising you how best to prepare your retail space for its re-opening, however having worked on campaigns that focussed around retail spaces and the protection of staff during the pandemic, we believe that GottaBe! is in a good position in which to advise business owners on this.

PPE For Your Staff

You will likely have heard the abbreviation “PPE” rather a lot during the past few months. We were surprised to hear that some people weren’t actually aware of what it meant, so wanted to start by clarifying: Personal Protective Equipment.

This is an absolute must and should be the first thing you consider. By not providing your staff with PPE and sanitising products, you are putting them in harm’s way. Gloves, masks, hand sanitisers and deep cleaning products are essential for re-opening your store. You may have been closed for the last three months, but to ensure safety for your staff, ensure they are coming to a clean work environment. You could also request that at the end of their shift, you politely request that they clean down their desk, station, POS or general area of work. This will prohibit any bacteria that they may end up carrying cannot be transmitted from them to you and vice versa. Here at GottaBe! we have implemented a sanitising station as soon as our team enter the office and cleaning stations in each area of the office – these are made up of paper towels, cleaning products, masks and sanitisers. This has meant that we have been able to responsibly welcome back the team into the office last week.

Social Distancing

We have all become adept at keeping distanced in a public setting, and even in our own homes. Even though businesses are re-opening their offices and brands are welcoming customers back to their stores, this does not mean that we can simply ignore what we have spent the best part of four months working on. Employees and customers must remain two metres from each other at all times to prevent as much transmittance as possible.

Different retailers have taken to regulating this in a range of ways that most commonly has resulted in tape or branded stickers on the floor to guide customers to a safe distance from one another. Alternatively, stores are also implementing plexiglass in front of points of sale and assigning staff/security different areas in-store in order to regulate the distance at which employees are maintaining from one another. Some clothing retailers have prohibited customers from trying on items to stop contamination and beauty counters will be applying strict restrictions on sampling the products on oneself.

In summary, despite shops re-opening signifying a return to ‘normal’ for the United Kingdom, the foreseeable will still be a different time to what we once lived in. Hopefully these measures will prevent a second wave and with any luck, we will be back to enjoying life the way it was, just with more a caution than the haphazard manner we’re used to.

We Can Help You Prepare Your Premises For It’s Re-Opening

If you are a business owner and are concerned about the re-opening of your store, please do not hesitate to contact us and we would be more than happy to talk through how best to ready your premises. We can even provide promotional staff – from our impressive 4,500+ roster – to regulate queues and distance between customers. For more on this, please use the following details.

hello@gottabemarketing.co.uk | 020 3976 2660

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