In a bid to revive excitement in the shopping strip and help struggling businesses, the majority of traders will throw open their doors til 8pm on Friday to mark the winter solstice.

During the day, traders will take their goods to the street with trestle tables set up on footpaths and extra sales on offer.

Phinc owner Tracey Togni and The Athlete’s Foot franchisee Rachael Hoffmann have started to make contact with all traders in a bid to breathe new life into the CBD.

“We want to bring the buzz back,” Ms Togni said.

“There are days when there’s hardly anyone around and you can get parks and we just want to fill those back up.”

They are also planning to form a traders-for-traders group which will work collectively to promote the CBD and organise events. Some of the ideas that have been floated are a progressive dinner and closing off parts of the street for events.

Ms Togni and Ms Hoffmann said they were inspired to take action because some of the businesses in the CBD were really struggling.

“If we don’t start to do something as a collective there will be ones that won’t be here and I don’t want to see any fall off,” Ms Togni said.

“We’re through our stage of the streetworks and the street looks beautiful but we want to get some excitement happening,” Ms Hoffmann said.

Ms Togni said late-night shopping could become a more permanent fixture on the calendar if shoppers came out in support of Friday’s late-night winter solstice sidewalk sale event.

“We’re hoping do it once a month over the winter period to start building up the momentum,” Ms Togni said.

She said that over summer that might end up being every Friday night.

Ms Hoffmann said there was demand for a return to late-night shopping.

“We’ve got around 13,000 people on our database, but there’s a big percentage of those who live in outlying areas and we do get calls all the time to ask ‘have you got late night shopping?’,” she said.

“It’s difficult to open on your own. It’s hard to draw people to the street if there’s not a collected group that are opening.”

Ms Hoffman said the demand for late-night shopping was higher during winter when weekend shopping opportunities were taken up with sporting activities. 

“Our customers want an opportunity to come in on a late night,” she said.

They have also started a facebook page called Your Hub Collective which will be a go-to page for what’s happening in the shopping and food precinct.

A $500 shopping spree, accessed through the Facebook page, is up for grabs and the prize will be drawn on Friday night.