Drought and online shopping are some of the challenges they are identifying in the 2018 festive season.

A last-minute rush would be music to the ears of the city’s store owners, with one long-time businessman likening the period to “grand final week”.

Sportspower Dubbo owner Anthony Barnes reported trade had been “steady since late last week” and consistent with trends seen in recent years, he was “absolutely expecting a big rush this week”.

His family have been involved in retail in the main street for about four decades and he highlighted the importance of the festive season to the sector.

“We’re certainly busy enough,” he said.

“The next [week] will decide if this is going to be a good Christmas or an average Christmas, absolutely.

“And that’s probably the same for all retailers… using a sporting analogy, it’s our grand final week.”

An employer of a team of workers, he thought it was likely the drought was having an impact on consumers.

“Yes, we’re probably not seeing as many west of Dubbo shoppers in at the moment, but it’s still a little bit too early to tell to see if they’ll come in this last minute rush,” Mr Barnes said.

Christmas brought its own atmosphere to city’s centre, the store owner said.

“There’s usually a nice buzz in the street, a lot of people getting out and about, creates a bit of a buzz, and people shopping and it’s also that social connection where they’re bumping into people in the street,” Mr Barnes said.

Autobarn Dubbo franchise owner Neil Sturrock reported the lead-up to Christmas had so far been “really flat, compared to other years”.

“Which is a concern, but we’re hoping to pick some of that back up over the last week, because every year Christmas seems to get later and later and we’ve got a week to go,” he said.

“So we’ll give it a red-hot crack and see if we can make up some of that shortfall over the next week.”

Mr Sturrock reported of e-commerce giants stepping up marketing to encourage consumers to buy online.

“Of course we don’t like that because we prefer to see local people shop locally and keep the employment up,” he said.

“I think... the whole general economy, people are a little bit concerned.

“There’s a lot of farmers who haven’t had income coming in, and while we had a bit of rain, it still hasn’t resulted in crops being planted and optimism about when they’re going to get an income.

“So that all affects Dubbo, that’s Dubbo’s economy but having said that, Dubbo’s economy is generally very strong and it will bounce back.

“So you’ve just got to manage your business accordingly, and if you need to scale back expenses, you do that.

“But as I said we’ve always been positive and we want to give it a red-hot crack leading into Christmas.”