KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While many busi­ness­es com­plained about poor sales this Christ­mas sea­son, it seemed that many cus­tomers held on­to some cash to splurge for Box­ing Day, par­tic­u­lar­ly in South Trinidad.

Not many stores par­tic­i­pat­ed in the grow­ing hol­i­day tra­di­tion, but hun­dreds of peo­ple rushed to Gulf City Mall in La Ro­main to take ad­van­tage of deals rang­ing from 10-15 per cent off elec­tron­ics, cloth­ing, ex­er­cise equip­ment and cos­met­ics.

The an­tic­i­pat­ed sale saw peo­ple flock­ing to the mall ahead of the open­ing time, and with­in an hour, there was grid­lock traf­fic lead­ing in and out of the area, with peo­ple cre­at­ing park­ing spots on the road­side.

By 11 am, the parkade was filled.

Among those busi­ness­es crowd­ed with cus­tomers were She Rocks, Sports & Games, Fran­cis Fash­ion/Shoe Locks, Mo­biles Ga­lore and Pho­to Cen­tre. Omar Hadeed, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of First Re­tail Group, said Box­ing Day at his out­lets was over­whelm­ing. Speak­ing at Vic­to­ria’s Se­cret, Hadeed said his de­ci­sion to open out­lets an hour ear­li­er paid off.

“Sim­i­lar to Black Fri­day, we have seen cus­tomers come out in num­bers, and traf­fic is fan­tas­tic. It is not even noon, and we have al­ready hit record num­bers. So far, it has been a fan­tas­tic sale,” Hadeed said.

Cus­tomers flocked to C3 Cen­tre in Ste Madeleine to a less­er ex­tent, but there were not many stores ad­ver­tis­ing sales. Most cus­tomers pa­tro­n­ised busi­ness­es at the foot court.

Mean­while, the South Park shop­ping cen­tre was qui­et, with some stores opt­ing to stay closed, and park­ing was read­i­ly avail­able.

High Street, San Fer­nan­do, once the lead­ing hub for re­tail in the city, was dis­ap­point­ing for the store own­ers and street ven­dors who de­cid­ed to open. On­ly JD’s Ex­clu­sive saw a crowd gath­er.It was sim­i­lar in the Princes Town branch, where cus­tomers as­sem­bled from 4.30 am when the store opened, tak­ing ad­van­tage of low-priced cloth­ing and ac­ces­sories.

Own­er, Dave Ho­sein, said Box­ing Day has al­ways been a spe­cial day for cus­tomers, who usu­al­ly sup­port his busi­ness. He said shop­pers rushed to get footwear be­fore mov­ing in­to the cloth­ing sec­tions. Ho­sein said sales this Christ­mas sea­son were slow­er than in years gone by but un­der­stood many cus­tomers wait­ed for the sales event, which grew over the years.

As busi­ness be­gan sta­bil­is­ing in 2022 from the shocks ex­pe­ri­enced by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Ho­sein said im­port­ing goods re­mains cost­ly be­cause of the hike in freight and trans­porta­tion costs.

He said get­ting for­eign ex­change al­so re­mains a chal­lenge.

As pres­i­dent of the T&T Re­tail­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Hadeed al­so ex­pressed this con­cern. He said on­line shop­ping re­mains pop­u­lar, so some US cur­ren­cy es­capes re­tail­ers with cus­tomers us­ing cred­it cards for on­line pur­chas­es. His group is look­ing at ex­ter­nal in­vest­ments in ar­eas like man­u­fac­tur­ing to be­gin earn­ing for­eign ex­change to sus­tain its busi­ness mod­el.

Hadeed added that crime con­tin­ues to af­fect busi­ness, with many cus­tomers rush­ing to stores in the morn­ing to get home be­fore dark.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion was an­oth­er is­sue re­tail­ers faced as they ex­pe­ri­enced de­lays in clear­ing im­ports.

Hadeed said some mem­bers com­plained about not get­ting their goods in time for this Christ­mas sea­son.

There were al­so ad­di­tion­al port charges and du­ties that hin­dered com­pet­i­tive­ness.