The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Nassau-based companies launching ‘Black Friday’ sales said the promotion helped to boost business, and expressed hope more consumers would embrace the idea and spend locally during the period.

Black Friday, the day following Thanksgiving in the US, traditionally marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, and has become known as a time when retailers offer significantly low prices on items.

While many Bahamians travel to the US every year for Black Friday sales, some local retailers have been using the shopping tradition to generate more business for themselves ahead of the Christmas shopping period.

Stuart Ellis, a marketing assistant at CBS Bahamas, said the company had seen a ‘high response’ to its Black Friday promotion.

The company’s promotion was capped off by a ‘Midnight madness’ sale with discounts on 20 selected items in store from 9pm Friday to midnight.

“Our primary goal is to have people spend money at home. We want to keep the money in the country. We try to do the best we can. If we could set the prices at landed cost we do that for this event. If you go to the US and get these items you would basically pay the same price because we are selling it at landed cost,” said Mr Ellis.

Hundreds showed up for the event, and CBS was ultimately forced to postpone the promotion because “the atmosphere outside of the store was not conducive to the family-friendly shopping atmosphere that we promote within our retail store”.

The company blamed what it called “a few unruly customers” for forcing it to come to that conclusion.

Luxury retailer Jewels by the Sea, which operates two locations, one at the Melia Nassau Beach resort and the other on Cable Beach, launched its Black Friday promotion for the second straight year.

A company executive told Tribune Business: “We have a really good traffic flow. We have been open from 7am and we had a line from 6.30 am, which was a real surprise for me. We have a 25-75 per cent off sale on all of our lines except bridal jewellery.”

The manager of Shayne’s Department Store on Carmichael Road, Ms Mortimer, said: “The sale was from Thursday until Saturday, but it has been a little slow. We haven’t seen that much, at least at this location.

“I can’t say about Palmdale and the Mall at Marathon. They might have seen more business than us so far. You could say it’s still kind of early, but last year it was more than what it is now. When we started on Thursday of last year we saw more people come in. This time here it started off relatively slow, so we will see how it gets.”