Retailers get ready for rush

Retailers preparing to open their doors on Thursday are expecting a rush of shoppers.

‘‘There have been a lot of things people have not been able to get in the last eight weeks, so there will definitely be demand for the public to get to the shops, to pick up some of those items,’’ said Greg Harford, chief executive of Retail NZ.

But he also expected many shoppers to remain nervous, and warned them to expect a different shopping experience than existed before lockdown. ‘‘There will be social distancing arrangements in place, and management of the numbers of people going into stores,’’ he said.

The arrangements would vary from shop to shop, with each shop-owner having to decide on their own safety arrangements.

They would be similar in nature to those used by supermarkets and pharmacies during the lockdown.

Harford said shops were desperate to open again. ‘‘It’s outstanding news for retailers that their shops will be allowed to open,’’ he said. He expected all but a handful of shops to open for business on Thursday.

Many had been surviving only through support from their banks, and from the wage subsidy scheme, he said. For some, the reopening would come too late to save them.

During, level 3 many retailers could only make sales virtually, or through contactless click and collect services. That included some small stores like Auckland’s Time Out Bookstore, which served customers books on a pizza paddle through a barricaded door.

But even doing that posed some huge challenges, and resulted in long delivery times, or long waits for customers to be able to collect the items they had paid for online. The Warehouse’s click and collect orders were taking anywhere between seven and 14 days after customers made their online purchases to be ready to collect.