Sunway Malls to offer flexi operating hours to retailers post-MCO

PETALING JAYA: Sunway Malls is granting non-essential retailers the flexibility to operate shorter hours after the movement control order (MCO) in anticipation of a much longer recovery period by business.

Sunway Malls will commence with a pilot test of this flexi hours for a month and if proven to be effective will be extended for another two months. The move will see retailers who opt for this option to operate for eight trading hours daily rather than the current practice of 12 hours.

The reduction of four trading hours daily will yield a cumulative 30-day saving of 120 trading hours.

The shorter operating hours also allow better optimisation of staffing arrangement from two working shifts to one shift with market estimates that 35% of the cost arises from wages while rental constitutes 15%. Based on the expected savings of a quarter from the 35%, which works out to be 8%, is equivalent to half month worth of rental saving.

Sunway Malls however will continue to operate as usual from 10am to 10pm daily along with essential retailers including supermarket, pharmacies, convenience stores and F&B outlets to ensure the public continues to have undisrupted access to these important supplies.

As business will take time to normalise in tandem with gradual return of public confidence, this move will enable retailers to cut down their operating costs to help protect and preserve retailers’ cash flows for the next few months.

“We foresee after the resumption of business post-MCO, there will be a gestation period before full recovery takes place. We understand too that the new normal of social distancing and absence of mass gathering will have the greatest impact for the first three months post MCO. Taking cognizance of this, we have to accord some degree business flexibility to our business partners,” Sunway Malls and Theme Parks CEO Chan Hoi Choy said in a statement today.

This is also in line with earlier calls by retailer associations before MCO to have shorter store hours to manage their cashflow.

This initiative follows other host of earlier initiatives announced by the mall group in response to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak that has impacted business performance.

source https://www.thesundaily.my/business/sunway-malls-to-offer-flexi-operating-hours-to-retailers-post-mco-JA2332290