After a tough year with little cash to spare, projections for small business sales have been dire, but local businesses are proving the numbers wrong. 

According to Business NSW projections, the Far West and Orana region are set to suffer the most when it comes to Christmas trading, with an expected 24 per cent decrease in spending. 

It comes at a time where the cost of living has forced people to change their spending habits and rearrange their priorities, and when the national campaign Buy From The Bush closed their online marketplace, recognising that small regional businesses didn’t need the added cost of a secondary selling platform. 

Amongst the projections and the prices, owner of Walgett’s Beach and Winnie Bronte Hiscox said that people choosing to support locals has made a successful start in the business’s first year. 

“I’m pretty happy with how it’s going. We’ve just had a pop up shop in Walgett for the last four days which was very successful and we got a lot of local support,” Bronte said 

The success of the first year hasn’t been without some tricky tactics, however, with Bronte and her mother and co-owner Cath Hiscox making sure that the products they stocks offer something different to surrounding business, and keeping overheads low by operating online. 

“People come in from the farm and they come and get their groceries and come and get the dog biscuits. Our local pickup spot is my dad’s stock and station agency business, so they grab their dog biscuits and pick up their order while they’re there,” Bronte said. 

The conscious effort of people from further afield to support regional businesses - sparked by movements like Buy From The Bush and Fill Your Esky (both started as campaigns in times regional areas were doing it tough) - have also helped the business thrive. 

“In our first month a lady from Sydney spent over $500, we thought that was amazing. She could go anywhere in Sydney and get that stuff cheaper if she wanted to. That was pretty cool to see.”

For operations with higher overheads, Business NSW is expecting that current economic conditions will hurt local businesses. 

“The state’s business community needs to capitalise on Christmas but tell us that this latest interest rate rise means less foot traffic, less sales and less contracts coming through the door,” Business NSW CEO Daniel Hunter said. 

“Members are telling us the most recent interest rate hike from the Reserve Bank has hit business confidence, but there is hope.”   

Despite the bleak expectation of a 24 per cent decrease in Christmas spending for Western NSW this year, a Business NSW survey that business confidence is slowly but surely returning, improving to -57.6 in the last quarter of 2023. 

“We applaud the NSW Government for introducing business measures to help in these tough times for those with loans, including changes to procurement rules, moves to scrap the Emergency Services Levy and energy support to small and medium business,” Mr Hunter said.