Many small towns experience a decrease in profits during the wintertime and need to make changes to ensure their survival.
Affected during the cooler seasons, businesses in the small south coast town of Sussex Inlet struggle during the holiday off-season.
Inlet cinema owner Mr Forbes said running a small business in a coastal town was difficult as no one stays during the winter months.
Mr Forbes has made many changes to his business to adjust to this style such as holding events for locals and changing business hours.
“During winter, we have events once a month. We have music, live comedy, things like that to sort of supplement lost revenue,” Mr Forbes said.
“Also reduced opening hours because sometimes there’s just nothing else to do.”
However, Mr Forbes also noticed a lack of support from the locals in the summertime, which has greatly affects his business year round.
Little Eadie’s café owner Shayan Mostaghim has also found it difficult to run his business during winter, leading him to create changes to his business to adjust to these conditions.
“You try and manage your hours, try and introduce new events, new things,” Mr Mostaghim said.
“We’re about to introduce some dinners through the quieter periods here to try and extend ourselves where we can.”
Mr Mostaghim also found that over the years, using social media has helped the business, as it draws in a younger audience around the town to help advertise during winter.
“We found that there wasn’t much of an Instagram presence here when we first opened. So, after opening, that was our goal,” Mr Mostaghim said.
“A lot of Instagram and word of mouth seem to work as the population is changing; everyone’s a lot younger on their phones. So, we tried to tap into that market.”
Both small-town business owners, Mr Mostaghim and Mr Forbes, have made slight changes to help their businesses during the off-season and have asked that locals and others help support them during winter.
