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Never on Sunday

By Susan Thorne

The Hakon Group won a fight against the Norwegian government to keep some of its RIMI stores open on Sunday.

While much of Europe has been extending store hours in recent years, steps are being taken in Norway to restrict Sunday shopping in an attempt to do away with loopholes being exploited by some retailers.

"Apningstidsloven" (the law of opening hours) has been a hot topic in the Norwegian parliament for the past year, as new legislation has changed the law three times.

Norway already had strict laws restricting retailing on Sunday, but they mainly center around what kind of merchandise could be sold, explained Sylvia Brustad, a Labor Member of Parliament and former Minister of Family and Children’s Affairs who helped to spearhead the newregulations.

"We had laws saying that stores could sell cold coffee but not warm coffee on Sundays, or hot dogs but not warm hot dogs," she said. That type of restriction was difficult to police and eventually broke down, as many retailers gradually expanded their offerings and store size. "They [stores] got bigger and bigger, and sold a lot more than they should have been selling on Sundays," Brustad says. "The law didn’t work, so we had to make a new one."

Politicians generally agreed: The Labor Party, the Christian Democrats, the agriculture-focused Center Party and the Socialist Left Party all voted for tighter restrictions, which use store size as the defining factor; only the right-wing Progressive Party supported looser regulation. As of Jan. 1, 1999, all Sunday retailing was prohibited except at filling stations less than 150 square meters (1,600 square feet) in size; stores selling groceries with a total area of less than 100 square meters, and certain transportation terminals.

Retailers didn’t take this lying down. The Hakon Group, Oslo, a leading Scandinavian supermarket and convenience store company, went head-to-head with the government in court at the beginning of the year to challenge the ban on Sunday openings, arguing that it could keep certain of its RIMI and ICA stores open since stores in airports and train stations were allowed to operate seven days a week.

"We at Hakon Group decided to test the law and open our stores on Sunday. The people who make the law didn’t like that," said Atle Sgursen, a regional manager with Hakon. Hakon won the case, causing the government to make explicit rules for stores near transportation hubs such as airports and train stations. Airport retailers may now be open on Sundays, but all others must close.

The new law seems certain to benefit gas station and convenience stores in Norway, which include 45 7-Eleven outlets licensed by Dallas-based 7-Eleven Inc. Hakon has been extending its operations in both those sectors, expanding the Swedish ICA convenience store chain in Norway and also purchasing 500 Norwegian gasoline stations last year from Statoil, the national oil company. Hakon is incorporating small convenience-style grocery outlets in those gasoline station locations.

While the Sunday factor may have been a catalyst, Sgursen said this expansion is due to the perceived potential of the convenience store format. "We would probably have done this [set up gas station stores] even if they were closed on Sundays."

"We see that they [gas station convenience stores] have started to sell a lot of the same products that are in our stores. We also see trends in the way people shop — they like to stop on the way home to pick up a few items." Thus the move into this retail sector is a good fit for Hakon.

This type of diversification is following a familiar pattern, pointed out Petter Vold, a consultant in the retail and distribution department of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Oslo. Vold said Norway is following the trend to convergence of retail businesses similar to that in England and France, where large grocery chains have taken over 25% to 45% of gasoline sales.

Do Norwegians want Sunday shopping? That point has been hotly argued inside Parliament and out, with media, politicians and the public coming down on both sides of the question. Surveys by the Labor Party at the time of the parliamentary debate showed that 75% of Norwegians wanted to do something besides shopping on Sundays, Brustad said, though residents of towns showed a greater desire to shop seven days a week. The Labor Party appealed to the interests of families and workers in defending its bill in Parliament: "We feel that families should be doing other things [besides shopping] on Sundays, and that the people who work in shops shouldn’t work then," she said. "Sunday should be different from other days."

On the other hand, Sgursen observes that even those who are opposed to Sunday opening in principle take advantage of it when it is available: "They say one thing and do another." Norwegians are quite similar to their Swedish neighbors in values and lifestyle, he pointed out, and the Swedes have taken to Sunday shopping enthusiastically. "I think Sunday has one of the highest percentages of turnover in the week there," he said.

Interestingly, most Norwegian retailers are fairly neutral to the Sunday opening question, according to Håvard Nustad, spokesman for Steen & Strom ASA in Oslo, shopping center developers and owners. Retailers seem to regard the whole matter as involving only smaller retailers, he said. They did not lobby as a group when the new parliamentary laws were proposed, nor have they protested the revised regulations. "It was not a very big issue," Nustad said. "We are not as concerned as you might think - it has more to do with gas stations. At the moment there is sufficient room to do Sunday shopping, as long as there is no obvious discrimination against convenience stores and gas stations." Given this attitude, it seems unlikely that the shopping center industry will offer much resistance to the new law.

"I do not think we will see any major changes in the legal restrictions on Sunday shopping in Norway," Vold summed up. "However, I think today’s law will be further adjusted as retailers continue to find loopholes in the regulations."