Dominique Lamb Message spend

Congratulations to our National Retail Awards Finalists

The NRA is delighted to have unveiled the finalists for the 2019 National Retail Awards, with the winners to be announced at the Gala dinner on September 4 in Sydney.

I want to say from the outset what a high calibre of nominations we have received across each and every category. Retail is a diverse industry with many exceptionally hard-working and talented people working in it.

From high-school students in their first paid job through to mum-and-dad small business owners and successful large-scale retailers, there is a conga line of dedicated workers achieving amazing things.

This year’s gala will be held at The Star, Sydney’s premier event space and we will be celebrating our ‘Make your mark’ theme for those who make an impression in the retail industry. I should note that tickets are selling fast, so if you’re interested in attending I recommend securing your seat as soon as possible here.

The impact of last weeks Telstra outage

Meanwhile I hope that those of you affected by the Telstra outage last Thursday have not been too severely impacted. Frustrating for shoppers and businesses alike, events such as these provide more than just a slight inconvenience.

While an outage such as this can never occur at a good time, it was all the more irritating that this happened just when large swathes of Australians were having their tax refunds hit their bank accounts.

Although many shoppers would have delayed making purchases until over the weekend and payment alternatives such as Afterpay and Zip Pay were not affected, we certainly do not want to see an event like this occur again.

Finally, with the aforementioned tax cuts starting to hit the back pockets of shoppers, we’re optimistic that there should be an uptick in activity over the coming weeks. Those receiving the tax breaks have certainly been encouraged to spend the money by everyone from the Government to economists and with interest rates so low there’s little point in stockpiling it in the savings account.

All the best for the week ahead!