What's moving
Trade counter and retail unit
Fixtures, display, counter, back stock
Half warehouse, half shop. A trade counter has customers walking in, stock out the back, and a fitted front that was built in place and does not want to leave.
What makes this one different
Customers keep arriving. Unlike a warehouse or an office, a counter has people turning up expecting to buy something, and the cost of being shut is immediate and visible. Most of the planning is about staying open on one side while the other side empties.
Shopfittings were built in place. Counters, gondolas, back shelving and signage are frequently fitted rather than free-standing, and taking them out without destroying them is a different skill from carrying them.
Front of house and back of house move at different speeds. The stock behind the counter can go early. The counter itself, the till, the card machine and the display cannot go until the last customer has been served, which puts them at the end of a long day.
The new unit is rarely ready in the way anybody promised. Fitting out, signage and a functioning till position all tend to arrive later than intended, which is exactly why the order things are delivered in matters so much.
What we do about it
Plan front of house and back of house as two sequences rather than one, so you stay open as long as possible
Take fitted counters and shelving out carefully enough that they can be used again
Deliver in the order the new unit actually needs — trading position first, everything else after
Work outside trading hours where staying open matters more than finishing quickly
Most commonly got wrong
Closing both units at once. There is almost always a way to keep one side selling, and it is worth more than the time it costs to plan.
Get a quote
Moving counter?
Stock, desks, plant or a counter — and where both units are. We will want to see the two yards before we put a number on it, because that is the only way the number means anything.