With the Commonwealth Games arriving in Glasgow in July, we’re looking at the potential sales opportunity this could bring retailers across the whole of Scotland, but are retailers themselves expecting an uplift?
David Mitchell
KeyStore Renfrew
My shop won’t benefit from the increased number of visitors to Glasgow, but the nearest venue to us is Ibrox, where the Rugby 7s are being held, so there might be a bit of footfall from that, Of course, people will be watching it on TV so I’d expect sales of beer and snacks to go up a bit, so between those two I’m hopeful of generating some profits. We saw a bump when the Olympics was on; it was a conversation topic in the shop for a month so hopefully the Games will be the same.
Leslie Kilminster
Best-one/Premier Aberdeen
I won’t be expecting much of a difference in my sales. I think you need to be nearer the heart of the action to benefit from it. We’ll try and do something to generate interest; in-store competitions or a raffle, but it’s very much a central belt event. We didn’t see much uplift when the Olympics was on so I suspect it’ll be the same. The World Cup is different, people are more inclined to buy beer for football, so I’ll be expecting an increase in alcohol sales when that’s on.
Graeme Knowles
Nisa Aberdeen
I think we’ll definitely see an uplift. I’m looking forward to it. We’re treating it the same way we treated the Olympics. When that was on we dressed the shop up and did well from it; customers were getting behind it and there was as great atmosphere. We had a lot of supplier support there, so hopefully that will happen again; if not we’ll still be going for it. I know Nisa has plans to help on that front. When it happens it’ll be the biggest fortnight the country’s ever seen.
Robert Sider
Clydebank Co-Op
The biggest opportunity lies with those retailers who are directly on the route to and from the stadia. If you’ve got tens of thousands of extra people walking past your store every day for a fortnight that’s an incredible opportunity. Our Baldwin Avenue store is in the vicinity of Scotstoun so we may see an uplift but I’m not expecting too much. In terms of the TV opportunity I think the World Cup will be the big one. There’s more media coverage so it’ll have bigger audiences.
