The Hard­ware Deal­ers' Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety fears that some hard­wares will have to shut their doors and re­trench staff fol­low­ing this gloomy Christ­mas sea­son. Pres­i­dent of the so­ci­ety, Joseph Cal­len­der, an­tic­i­pates this will be the re­al­i­ty next year as many hard­ware own­ers are buck­ling un­der pres­sure from poor Christ­mas sales due to the stag­na­tion in the econ­o­my. There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 hard­wares in T&T.

Com­par­ing past Christ­mases to this year's, Cal­len­der said hard­ware own­ers would have been busy han­dling a bee­hive of cus­tomers. "In years gone by we would have been bust­ing at the seams." To­day, it's a dif­fer­ent sto­ry with cus­tomers few and far be­tween and sales dip­ping dan­ger­ous­ly low in the height of the Yule­tide sea­son. At a meet­ing with hard­ware deal­ers a month ago, Cal­len­der said many of the own­ers had in­di­cat­ed that busi­ness was ex­treme­ly slow and they may have to close their doors and send home staff in the com­ing months.

Cal­len­der said many of the hard­ware own­ers were owed by build­ing con­trac­tors, which was putting a fur­ther squeeze on their op­er­a­tions. The con­trac­tors are owed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $8 bil­lion by the Gov­ern­ment. An­oth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tor, Cal­len­der said, was that man­u­fac­tur­ers and whole­salers or sup­pli­ers were now op­er­at­ing re­tail out­lets or sell­ing di­rect­ly to cus­tomers, giv­ing them stiff com­pe­ti­tion. "If this trend con­tin­ues, sev­er­al hard­wares will face clo­sure and staff will be sent home. The whole coun­try is in a vac­u­um."

Fight tooth and nail to sur­vive

Own­er of Mo­hammed Mar­ket­ing Ltd in Princes Town, Ashraph Mo­hammed, said de­spite main­tain­ing his prices, cus­tomers were not re­spond­ing for Christ­mas. "This is how bad it is." Re­cent­ly, Mo­hammed laid off two of his work­ers, while a third em­ploy­ee works part-time. Eu­ric Bhag­wans­ingh, own­er of Bhag­wans­ingh's Hard­ware in Tu­na­puna, said since Jan­u­ary he had been fight­ing tooth and nail to keep his busi­ness afloat. "Cus­tomers are no longer com­ing to hard­wares to buy. They are go­ing straight to fac­to­ries, which are of­fer­ing re­tail sales."

In a bid to curb his ex­pens­es, Bhag­wans­ingh said he had al­ready sent home five em­ploy­ees. Bhag­wans­ingh said the few cus­tomers who had been com­ing in­to his store were or­der­ing items in small quan­ti­ties. "Pre­vi­ous­ly, they used to buy in bulk. In years gone by we used to sell two to three loads of ce­ment a week. Now we are fight­ing to sell a load." Bhag­wans­ingh said the fastest sell­ing item in his hard­ware was vinyl which was be­ing sold for $13 a yard. "All I am mak­ing is $1 on each yard."

Re­tail trade be­ing erod­ed

Own­er and man­ag­er of BK Hard­ware in Ari­ma Bindra Ma­haraj said the prob­lem of poor sales had been on­go­ing for the past three years. Ad­mit­ting that he had seen a 65 per cent drop in sales in the last few months, Ma­haraj said this year had cer­tain­ly been the worse. He ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the prob­lem had been creep­ing up on hard­ware deal­ers for the longest time. "Busi­ness has been bring­ing in turnovers but not prof­its be­cause of the com­pe­ti­tion in the mar­ket," he added. He took the Hard­ware Deal­ers So­ci­ety to task for not ad­vis­ing its mem­bers on how to chart a new way for­ward.

Ma­haraj said the re­tail trade was be­ing erod­ed and the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to ad­dress the sec­tor ur­gent­ly. He sug­gest­ed that one way of keep­ing hard­wares from go­ing bel­ly up was to in­crease the mo­bil­i­sa­tion fee for con­trac­tors from ten per cent to 30 per cent to help with the cash flow prob­lems with which many of them were faced. Ma­haraj said the Min­istry of Hous­ing could al­so al­lo­cate land for peo­ple, who in turn could buy ma­te­ri­als from hard­wares to build their own homes.

Bhag­wans­ingh's feel­ing the pinch

Sales at Bhag­wans­ingh's Hard­ware and Steel In­dus­tries-which has the largest hard­ware chain in the coun­try-has al­so tak­en a nose dive. On Fri­day, He­len Bhag­wans­ingh, the own­er of five hard­ware branch­es, ad­mit­ted that sales for 2010 were not the best. "I would say slow, very slow." Bhag­wans­ingh said sales start­ed to de­cline since last year. She not­ed, how­ev­er, that Christ­mas last year was far bet­ter than this year. Bhag­wans­ingh's was reg­is­tered in 1974.

In an at­tempt to woo cus­tomers, Bhag­wans­ingh said they tried to keep prices down, sell top qual­i­ty mer­chan­dise and serve cus­tomers with a smile. De­spite a de­crease in sales, Bhag­wans­ingh said she was keep­ing her fin­gers crossed that busi­ness would pick up as Christ­mas Day drew clos­er. "If cus­tomers get a Christ­mas fever things might change." The busi­ness­woman, how­ev­er, was op­ti­mistic that when the Gov­ern­ment paid out mon­ey owed to con­trac­tors and Cli­co share­hold­ers, there would be a boost in sales for the new year.