Most peo­ple are ac­cus­tomed to or­der­ing food, cloth­ing, and elec­tron­ic gad­gets on­line. How­ev­er, as COVID-19 forced busi­ness­es and en­tre­pre­neurs to adopt in­no­v­a­tive and cre­ative ideas to stay afloat, one fire­works provider em­ployed a sim­i­lar on­line ser­vice and in­tro­duced home de­liv­ery and curb­side pick-up for his prod­ucts.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Fire­One Fire­works Ltd An­dre Abra­ham said they had es­tab­lished an on­line web­page to en­cour­age cus­tomers to pre-or­der their items ahead of the an­nu­al Box­ing Day Sale.

He said, “Be­cause of COVID-19 con­cerns, we could not have too many cus­tomers in­side the store so that cam­paign start­ed two days ago, and they would have got­ten the same ben­e­fits as if they had phys­i­cal­ly come to the sale where you buy one and get one free.”

Sat­ur­day’s sale be­gan at 9 am and end­ed around mid­night.

Ad­mit­ting cus­tomers were spend­ing more cau­tious­ly, Abra­ham said, “They are look­ing to spread their mon­ey and want val­ue for it.”

Ayanna Johnson, left, Kimberly Mitchell and her daughter Azaliah Mitchell check out the pillows at Mode Alive Trading Boxing Day Sale in Valsayn yesterday.

Anisto Alves

In­di­cat­ing he was sat­is­fied with sales dat­ing back to Di­vali, Abra­ham said he was ex­pect­ing a good new year.

“A lot of peo­ple are cel­e­brat­ing at home. We do not re­al­ly have a choice this year and they want to make the most of it. They are cel­e­brat­ing from their back­yard or park and there are a lot more small­er cel­e­bra­tions tak­ing place in­stead of these big events. Every­one wants to be in their own space and it is some­thing the kids love. Peo­ple want to feel a lit­tle bit of pos­i­tiv­i­ty and hope.”

Abra­ham said while the lack of US cur­ren­cy re­mained a ma­jor con­cern for them, in­come streams from re­gion­al ven­tures had al­so dried up due to events be­ing can­celled and post­poned be­cause of the virus.

How­ev­er, he said, “Af­ter the buss is the bang, so we are ac­tu­al­ly us­ing the down-time to re­tool our busi­ness, re-en­gi­neer and look for new prospects.”

Claim­ing a lot of work has been go­ing on be­hind the scenes in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the re­turn to nor­mal­cy, Abra­ham said they had been for­tu­nate not to have to re­duce their 200-em­ploy­ee work­force.

Stand­ing along­side her truck which had been loaded with ap­prox­i­mate­ly $28,000 worth of fire­works for De­cem­ber 31, a Diego Mar­tin woman who has been tak­ing ad­van­tage of the an­nu­al Box­ing Day Sale for more than five years said she had no prob­lems com­ing out to shop for the items which is now part of their fam­i­ly tra­di­tion to wel­come the new year.

The young la­dy, who did not want to give her name, said they had been part of the crowd wait­ing out­side the ware­house in Ma­coya from 9 am.

Af­ter cal­cu­lat­ing how much they had spent, the young la­dy smiled be­hind her mask af­ter be­ing told she could shop for some more fire­works as the al­lo­cat­ed bud­get had not yet been ex­haust­ed.

In­di­cat­ing the fire­works were for per­son­al use on­ly, the woman said, “The sales looked like it was good so far. I thought it would have been more packed than this, but it was nor­mal. We got in pret­ty quick and got out just as quick­ly.” She be­lieved peo­ple might have been hes­i­tant to come out be­cause of the COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

A customer shopping at FireOne Fireworks, Macoya.

Anisto Alves

A mid­dle-aged woman from San Juan said mem­bers of her im­me­di­ate and ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly had each con­tributed $500 to the trol­ley of fire­works her hus­band was off-load­ing. Ad­mit­ting they had been not been spend­ing on lux­u­ry items dur­ing the past cou­ple of months, she said this was the one “usu­al thing” her fam­i­ly looked for­ward to as they wel­comed the new year.

Waz­im Mo­hammed, of Char­lieville, pur­chased some lanterns for a func­tion his fam­i­ly is host­ing to­day. He de­scribed the ser­vice as quick and stress-free.

A Port-of-Spain fa­ther along with his two sons said al­though he has been con­scious­ly watch­ing his pen­nies, “At the end of the day, this is for the kids and in the spir­it of the sea­son. I couldn’t not do it.” He es­ti­mat­ed spend­ing close to $8,000.

Mean­while, at Mode Alive in Val­sayn, CEO Gary Aboud said the pub­lic had turned out seek­ing bar­gains.

Al­though the store was not crowd­ed, there was a con­stant stream of cus­tomers from the time they opened at 9 am un­til they closed at 5 pm. Aboud said the an­nu­al sale was about giv­ing back to loy­al cus­tomers.

He urged, “Nev­er give up. The more dif­fi­cult an econ­o­my, the more cre­ative we must be­come and more con­scious to find new op­por­tu­ni­ties.”