Unvaxxed are spenders, vaxxed are not
Based on sparse data, so I will update in a week if it changes.
Sally Capp is the Mayor of Melbourne. She seems hopeless. This is pie in the sky dreaming;
We have a small retail shop in the Melbourne CBD. There is nothing refreshed and resilient about Melbourne right now. Retail has been devastated over the last 22 months, rents are currently going for about 40% of what they used to go for but the landlords don’t like committing to long term leases on those rents, they’re holding out for a return to the normal that they remember from 2019. Realistically that’s not going to happen and just as realistically sales had been dropping since about 2017 anyway even if rents hadn’t been.
Last year December was about 25% of a normal December for us. Masks, nobody working in the city, no tourists (and Dan Andrews) did their damage.
We reopened a few weeks ago after the madness of the May to end of October lock-downs ceased (with few weeks in June being open) and sales in the last few weeks have been ok, not great, but ok. Some of our unvaxxed customers though had been saying that they were getting their Xmas shopping in early before they got locked out this week from most activities. They were great spenders, kudos to you guys.
This week we’re relying on the vaccinated to spend. And so far they’re not. Our sales are low, very low. And this is what yesterday’s Bourke St Mall looks like in pedestrian counts;
And this is what it looked like at the same time of the year in 2019;
Yep 1,400 pedestrians in the city at peak compared to 3,500 pedestrians at peak in November 2019. This is the same every day except the weekends which are ok, about 80% of what it used to be like although that might change this week when the unvaxxed are basically locked down.
I’m not in Melbourne at the moment, so I rely on employees and friends/family for how it feels. Totalitarian is the general gist.
The theory that the unvaxxed spend more is holding up through this weeks figures. Fairly ordinary days most, especially for this time of the year. One exception.
Last week will be better than this week. Whereas at this time of the year we kind of expect each week closer to Xmas to be significantly better than the week before.
Oh and it had taken us until May (from November the previous year) to start getting our trade up past the break even level. And as soon as that happened we were locked down again. I've never been convinced that this was coincidental.