In an open letter to outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Audax, the company behind magazines such as Weekend and Mijn Geheim and behind AKO magazine, calls for the sale of newspapers, magazines and books to be regarded as essential. Then they could open again.
Audax says in the open letter, which is published in, among others, the Financieele Dagblad, that it does not only appeal to the affiliated Bruna, AKO and Readshop and other literature stores, but also to suppliers and customers.
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Audax refers to Belgium, Germany and France, where newspapers, magazines and books are considered essential. According to the company, a further extension of the lockdown is ‘disastrous’ for shops that sell literature.
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Drinking coffee in Bussum shops
Shopkeepers in the Bussumse Spiegelstraat are conducting a ‘silent protest’ against the lockdown today. They do this by opening their shops, not to let customers in and sell something, but to have a cup of coffee with them, says Nicole Schut, co-owner of clothing store Bibi’s.
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Many customers have been abroad in recent weeks and they have seen what the measures are like in other countries, Schut said.
She herself was in Málaga in Spain, “and there is not a person who does not walk on the street with a mouth mask and all the terraces and the restaurants inside are full,” she says. scum.
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‘Still a lot of clothes on the racks’
“So why should we pay any longer, we still have racks full of items that we would normally have sold before Christmas and New Years.”
Customers cannot get coffee at Bibi’s, but if they see nice clothes hanging from the doormat, they can take them home to try on.
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Amsterdam shopkeepers: open from 14th
Amsterdam shopkeepers and catering entrepreneurs, united in Amsterdam City, are meanwhile working on a petition in which they call on the (outgoing) government to reopen the catering industry and shops on 14 January, starting next Friday.
Like Audax, the petition points to countries around us, where shops and catering are allowed to open. They also mention the omikron variant, which seems to be less severe for humans.
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‘Click & collect does not cover damage’
In addition, they say, among other things, that the click & collect system cannot cover the damage and the same applies to compensation by the government, Amsterdam City claims.
The petition was signed by more than 4300 people on Saturday afternoon. That doesn’t seem like much, partly in view of the almost 900,000 people who live in Amsterdam alone.
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Belgian shops and catering are flourishing
Possibly a lot of people have been to Belgium, to go shopping and have something to eat and drink.
The Dutch have been shopping in Antwerp so much lately that, according to the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, many shopkeepers 20 to 30 percent have generated more turnover than usual, thanks to ‘the Dutch’.
Parking lot full of Dutch cars
At the end of December, a parking lot in the center of Antwerp stood in front of more than half full with Dutch cars, RTL Z already saw at the end of December.
“It’s really crazy here. The businesses are just full, inside and out. It’s like it’s Saturday, so busy,” said the owner of a number of Antwerp catering businesses, while it was a weekday.
You could also hear many Dutch people in other Belgian cities in recent weeks.
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