Retailers brace for long winter

Several retailers in Marlborough are happy with the number of local customers they have had after moving to alert level two, but some say they are still in for a ‘‘long cold winter’’.

Mitchell Sports Power owner Robin Mitchell said the business had been above expectations on Queen’s Birthday Weekend with a lot of local support, but he wasn’t too sure what it would look like in the next few months.

‘‘It’s a very busy time of the year for us, with the winter code starting up,’’ he said.

But for the coming weeks, the customers will slowly decrease and ‘‘I think we could be in for a long-haul hard winter’’, he said.

‘‘There is a lot of stock which is very late and if we have a cold winter, a lot of men will not buy unless it is very cold, women buy in anticipation of a season, men buy when the need is there,’’ Mitchell said.

#FRESH owner Greg Hall said he had also been a lot busier, but he was running out of stock on some of his key products which wasn’t good for his business.

‘‘We are getting a lot of customers in but now we have run out of our popular products, and we are losing money because of freight capacity reduction,’’ he said.

Bed Bath & Beyond assistant manager Jessica Simmons said their store had been very busy, not just at Queen’s Birthday weekend, but ever since they moved down to alert level two.

‘‘It’s been a really good comeback since coming out of lockdown and [last] Friday was a hectic day,’’ Simmons said.