{"id":49465,"date":"2017-06-30T10:54:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T08:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=49465"},"modified":"2017-06-30T10:54:48","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T08:54:48","slug":"extend-trading-hours-small-and-medium-entrepreneurs-cash-in-on-closures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2017\/06\/30\/extend-trading-hours-small-and-medium-entrepreneurs-cash-in-on-closures\/","title":{"rendered":"EXTEND TRADING HOURS: Small and Medium Entrepreneurs cash in on closures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) in Malawi\u2019s cities and townships have touted the positive relationship with residents as a contributing factor to their decision to have flexible business hours. Most remain open for trade to late in the evening and do not close over lunch.<\/p>\n

A visit to some shop owners in Zingwangwa, Chilobwe and Ndirande townships on Tuesday proved that SMEs are cashing in on the early closures of major retail stores, mostly based in the Central Business District (CBD).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always have a good network and relationship with residents. Besides that, we know our customers, so, it would be na\u00efve to close at lunch and then as early as 5pm, yet we need money to survive,\u201d James Mwazani, a Chilobwe resident said.<\/p>\n

He further said it is obvious that most of their customers are working class and hence closing their businesses at 5pm would not make any business sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI should admit that we cash in on the early shop closures of those that have shops in Limbe town and Blantyre City,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In a separate i n terview, Thomas Phiri, a trader based in Zingwangwa, was of the view that the kind of business he runs\u2014which is a barbershop\u2014 requires extended hours for him to make more profits.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of our customers phone us to wait for them to have their beard or hair shaved and that keeps us going. Sometimes, we even close depending on the clients that are there at that particular time,\u201d Phiri said.<\/p>\n

He added that security issues to their businesses lie in customers themselves through the neighbourhood spirit as opposed to those operating in the CBD.<\/p>\n

This comes as business operators in the CBDs of Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba and other townships choose to close their shops during lunch hour breaks and in the early evening at 5pm.<\/p>\n

Our investigations have further shown that the situation is worse during the weekend when business operators don\u2019t event open on Sundays, a development economists say is detrimental to Malawi\u2019s agro-based economy.<\/p>\n

The tendency deprives working class people chance to buy goods and services at lunch and after 5pm, according to the Consumers Association of Malawi and others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) in Malawi\u2019s cities and townships have touted the positive relationship with residents as a contributing factor to their decision to have flexible business hours. Most remain open for trade to late in the evening and do not close over lunch. A visit to some shop owners in Zingwangwa, Chilobwe and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49472,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49465\/revisions\/49472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}