Early closing and lock out laws are squeezing the promotional budgets and revenue of bars and clubs with a dramatic knock-on effect on print suppliers.
The clamp down on late-night trading in Sydney’s entertainment districts has hit the demand for all flyers, postcards, window posters, POP and advertising handouts. According to Glen Marsh of Marsh Media, a business that has traditionally relied on the entertainment and hospitality sectors, the impact of the new laws brought in this year on promotional budgets has been devastating.
“We’ve been screwed by the fall off in demand. It’s been a massive hit. We [Marsh Media] have grown 20 to 30% every year for the past ten years until the new laws came in. If we had not won new business this year we were facing laying off some people,” he said.
The laws have meant a major change in the Alexandria-based printer’s client base away from the entertainment world towards marketing agencies, architects real estate agents, schools and franchises. The development of an online ordering system based on myprintcloud with job tracking and online payments as made a big difference.
“People don’t realise how big the change is. There are hundreds of thousands of people at night in Sydney’s CBD, the Cross and the Rocks. The laws have had a massive effect. We noticed it straight away, January is always fairly quiet but February was dead,” said Marsh.
The new laws include lockouts from 1.00am and last drinks at 3.00am as well as restrictions on how alcohol is served. The alcohol regulations will be extended to cover the entire Sydney CBD from July 18. After midnight people will be banned from drinking shots and doubles in the entertainment precincts of Darlinghurst, Haymarket and Surry Hills. Anyone who leaves licensed premises after 1:30am will not be allowed to re-enter.
The moves has been criticised by the Australian Hotels Association, which describes them as a significant cost to business
And that includes printing.