Owners credit late opening on Thursdays and a loyalty card shared by forty businesses.

Independent retailers across Calder’s old town have reported their strongest October trading since before the long downturn, with takings up an average of 14 per cent on the same month last year, according to figures gathered by the Old Town Traders’ Association from 52 of its members.

The rise follows two changes introduced at the end of the summer: a shared decision by most of the shops on Weaver Street, Mill Lane and the market square to stay open until 8pm every Thursday, and the launch of the Old Town Card, a loyalty scheme now accepted by forty businesses ranging from a cheesemonger to a bicycle repair workshop. Card holders collect a stamp for every £10 spent in any participating shop and receive a £5 voucher, redeemable anywhere in the scheme, once they have filled a card of ten stamps. The association says more than 6,800 cards have been handed out since late August and just over 1,900 vouchers have already been redeemed.

Thursday nights draw a different crowd

Traders say the late opening has brought in shoppers they rarely saw before: office workers heading home from the business quarter, parents who cannot get into the old town during school hours, and people arriving early for performances at the Corn Exchange. Several shops reported that Thursday has become their busiest day of the week, overtaking Saturday for the first time.

“We were nervous about paying staff for three extra hours on a weekday evening. In September we broke even on it. In October the Thursday evenings paid for the whole week’s wages,” said Beatrice Okafor, who runs Okafor and Daughters, a homeware shop on Mill Lane.

Ms Okafor, who also chairs the association’s events group, said the key was that enough shops joined at once. “One shop staying open late is a lit window on a dark street. Thirty shops staying open is an evening out,” she said. The association paid for extra lighting along Weaver Street and persuaded two cafés and a wine bar to extend their hours to match. City Hall’s own footfall counters, installed at three entrances to the old town, recorded around 41,000 visits on the four Thursday evenings in October, compared with roughly 17,000 on the equivalent evenings last year. Saturday footfall was broadly flat, suggesting the evenings have added visits rather than simply shifting them.

A card that keeps money in the old town

The loyalty scheme was designed by a small group of traders after a survey of customers last spring found that many visited only one shop per trip. Because a voucher earned at the butcher can be spent at the bookshop, owners say customers are now walking further and browsing more. The association estimates that the average card holder visits three participating shops per trip, up from fewer than two.

The scheme costs each business a flat £15 a month, which covers printing, a simple stamp-and-voucher ledger kept by the association’s part-time coordinator, and a quarterly settlement in which shops that redeem more vouchers than they issue are reimbursed by those that issue more. Owners said the arrangement was deliberately low-tech, with paper cards and rubber stamps rather than an app.

Not every trader has benefited equally. Shops on the eastern end of Canal Street, which sits outside the lit Thursday route, said they saw little change, and two businesses there have asked to have the lighting extended. Harold Pennick, who runs a picture-framing workshop near the canal bridge, said his October was “steady but no better” and that the scheme needed to reach the edges of the old town to be fair.

What comes next

The association plans to keep Thursday late opening running through to Christmas and will add Tuesday evenings in the three weeks before the holiday. It is also in talks with City Hall about a modest grant to extend festoon lighting along Canal Street and into Tanner’s Yard, where several new businesses opened this year. Councillor Rhona Gaskell, who holds the economy brief at City Hall, said the figures showed that “small, cheap ideas agreed by people who actually run shops” could do more for the old town than larger regeneration schemes. She said officers would look at whether parking charges in the two old town car parks could be reduced after 6pm on Thursdays.

Traders remain cautious. October included a half-term week and unusually mild weather, both of which help footfall, and several owners said a single good month did not undo years of thin margins. But for the first time in a long while, the mood on Weaver Street is something close to optimistic. The association will publish November figures in the second week of December.