By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
SuperValue’s owner yesterday described Christmas sales as “‘satisfactory”, telling this newspaper that the consumer rush was “worse than Hurricane Matthew”.
“It was worse than Hurricane Matthew. We were very busy,” said Rupert Roberts. “Like hurricanes, when people decided to shop all at one time it creates a problem to handle.
“There was a lot of preparation, and I guess we held our own. We got the results. So far, the Christmas period from Sunday to Sunday appears to have been good.
Mr Roberts, acknowledged, though, that he has yet to do an actual year-over-year comparison of the sales performance for his SuperValue and Quality Supermarkets stores.
“Christmas is a lot of stress like hurricanes,” he added. “You have so much preparation, and so much to do during and so much to do after that. The staff have to put in overtime and double time and so on to cope, or to keep the level of customer service there,” Mr Roberts told Tribune Business.
Back in October, Mr Roberts estimated that Hurricane Matthew had resulted in an 80 per cent spike in business.
He said yesterday of Christmas: “All things considered, I’d say that things have been satisfactory. I’m sort of pleased with the sales we saw this period, and I’m talking about all across the board. Some [stores] performed better than others. The inner city stores performed, and the larger stores performed.”
Comments
birdiestrachan 7 years, 8 months ago
There was a whole lot of shopping going on. Not only for food. but for other items. I was surprise after I had heard so many "poor mouth " stories.
John 7 years, 8 months ago
Rupert Roberts must realize by now that he has a strong monopoly control on the retail food market. And so during times of holidays or events such as hurricanes his sales will bubble over, regardless of the economic conditions. Apart from that, his stores are clean, well maintained and well stocked, so consumers will choose to shop there for the holidays that require a lot of food. But if you notice most of the other non-food stores, both here and in the US, have been running sales throughout the holidays. Amazon.com is reporting that it doubled the number of deliveries it made for Christmas 2015, and the Chinese rival, Alibaba.com is also reporting a two fold increase in its business. Meanwhile while retailers like target, Walmart, Macys and BrandsMart are all in a flurry to strengthen their online shopping and home delivery businesses. Online shopping is definitely having an impact on local businesses as some of the courier stores could not handle the number of packages that came in or the number of customers that came to collect them. The Christmas rush was combined with persons replacing damaged furniture and appliances for shipping companies, like The Betty K. and The MailBoat. Despite extended hours and additional sailings, these companies closed on December 23, before many consumers were able to collect their goods, much of what they were expecting for the holidays. Government must now seek to address the change in consumer behavior, where persons are now shopping directly online. Local business pay the same duty, plus additional taxes and license fees and definitely will not be able to compete with online shopping where the consumer avoid these fees.
ohdrap4 7 years, 8 months ago
i buy online a lot. but these are clothing items that cannot be purchased locally, and , in the past , i would either have to trevel or have a seamstress sew. materials are subject to 45 pc duty and the seamstresses are expensive so i purchase online.
you forget john, that the APDC is guaranteed 10pc return, so that is an added cost. the rising cost of the APDC suddenly made the couriers look much cheaper.
that said, if i purchase a pair of pants at amazon for 25 dollars, i pay 9 to ship, 5 for duty, so 41 plus vat. the pants at the mall sell for 85. the merchant does not buy the pants for 25, he pays much less so he also pays less shipping and duty then me.
please stop giving the govt ideas to tax me more to give to the merchants. thanks.
BTW, I JUST PURCHASED SHOES LOCALLY BECAUSE THE MERCHANT BEAT THE AMAZON PRICE. AND I PURHCASED THREE PAIRS.
John 7 years, 8 months ago
It is a false perception that merchants buy below prices on Amazon and other online sites. Many of the sellers on these sites buy their goods as close-outs, over stocked, returned or even irregular merchandise so their first cost is lower than a merchant pays for his goods to bring to the Bahamas. secondly it has been discovered that many of the couriers are the ones benefiting from this new shopping trend. They are charging the consumers duties and vat but many are not paying these taxes to government. So they are making thousands of dollars weekly by clinging on to taxes collected from their customers but not passed on to the government. Then the government claims it cannot police the couriers properly because the customs department is short staffed. Then of course there is the question of 35% duty plus vat being paid on fabric/material. This has crippled a lot of stores that use to sell school uniforms because when they bring in the raw material at such a high duty then cut and sew the unifroms, they have to sell skirts for $25-30 and jumpers from $30-$45. Persons can purchase the uniforms in the flea markets for much less and if their children are travelling with them they can declare exemptions. So the local vendors cannot compete. The biggest problem we have in this country is all governments see the need for local Bahamians to subsidize vacations for some 3 million tourist that visit this country every year. The hotels and resorts and cruise lines get huge tax breaks while the local Bahamian is saddle beyond his eyebrows with taxes.
John 7 years, 8 months ago
Some feel that BTC did not have a good Christmas as their first cell phone rival company appeared to dig deeply into their business. The attractive, "no-contract"packages offered with the purchase of every cell phone went well with Bahamian consumers and this along with the thousands of free sim cardsthe company gave away caused many persons to switch to Aliv or , at least, pick them up for a second cell service. It would be interesting to see how the competition pans out and what the cell phone market will be like come Christmas 2017. Also the Cable vs Flow TV.
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