July 4th marks Independents’ Day in the UK – also known as UK Indie Day.
What is Independents’ Day?
Independents’ Day UK is a campaign that exists to support and promote independent retail businesses across the UK all year round, but with an annual focus on July 4th.
Independents account for around 65% of the approximately 290,000 retail outlets in the UK and are at the heart of local communities throughout the country.
What is an independent business?
Independently owned and operated means a business that independently manages and controls its day-to-day operations through its ownership and management.
As a family business, Chrisbeon is independent and has been for nearly 50 years now. For us, it is important to have a relationship with our clients to ensure we are giving them office furniture and supplies that suits them and how they work.
Independents Day promotes independent businesses and allows us to share what we do, how we do it and how that benefits our customers.
What we do and how we do it…
Chrisbeon works with employers to ensure that they provide a suitable environment for their employees, leading to high morale and increased productivity.
We meet the needs of each individual customer – starting from a conversation and leading to a CAD plan so that they can see exactly what we are suggesting, adapting the plans to how they would like it to be, and sourcing all of the furniture and supplies, including printers, shredders, storage and more, that they require.
We can then deliver the products to the door, build the furniture on-site so that we can see if there are any issues and conduct DSE checks on display screen equipment to ensure employee health and safety.
UK Indie Day 2020
The 2020 Independents Day is extremely important as many independent businesses are reopening after the Coronavirus lockdown.
Social media engagement and insight tool Maybe* is supporting the campaign this year and conducted a survey to provide some insight to independent retailers about what they can expect of shoppers.
Maybe* surveyed would-be shoppers to understand if and when they will return to the shops and showrooms, and what their concerns will be.
What will shoppers do post-lockdown?
Of those surveyed 90% said they plan to return to the shops, but 47% of people did say they were nervous about it.
Around 45% said they have no intention of returning to the High Street any time soon but 43% said they planned to shop as before and 7.5% said they are planning to shop more.
Polly Barnfield OBE, the CEO of Maybe*, said: “Britain’s retailers should feel confident that despite the ongoing concerns around COVID, the vast majority of shoppers are ready to start spending again.
“Equally, retailers should be aware of what consumers expect from them to make their shopping experience as reassuring and safe as possible.”
Social-distancing measures
We know that people may be nervous and have created a one-way system within our Telford showroom, along with hand-sanitising at the door, to make sure that social-distancing is carried out.
We look forward to seeing our customers again and working with them to create the home offices or business layouts that they need as we come out of lockdown.
