Local Hawker

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 9, Issue 419, 14 January 1992, Page 8

Local Hawker

• In a front page article you published recently, local retailer, Paul Scarfe, who was presenting a petition calling for the abolishment of hawkers who

operate roadside businesses locally, mentioned the snow-chain hire business that hired and fitted chains to skiers' vehicles on the mountain road. As the proprietor of this business I would like to state that myself and my partner are local people, and have been for years, and started out chain hire as another form of income. Because of the economic downtum in the rural scene we were finding work hard to come by, thus we started this other business. It seems that Mr Scarfe and maybe one or two other retailers don't like the competition we present. On busy skiable days, Ohakune's chain hire outlcts actually run out of chains to hire so it is obvious that the competition isn't too, severe. Also competition is healthy as it keeps prices down which benefits the customer who like most of us, don't have too much money to spend these days. Last ski season we had full support of the Turoa road staff and our customers thought that it was about time an operation of fitting chains to cars was available. Mr Scarfe quoted "imagine hiring skis from the back of a truck" in the article. As we have no intcntion of doing this we also feel that our chain hire service is in the right place with the customers benefiting. As we are a couple of local fellows trying to start a small business in our area, we need the support of the retailers and public in Ohakune to help this operation gct going.

P.R.

Farrer