The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

Bahamian retailers yesterday voiced optimism that a solid Thanksgiving showing will translate into strong Christmas sales as they ready for the most important season in the industry’s calendar.

Margo Farrington, chief marketing officer for Lorene’s department store, said sales were “good” for the Black Friday and Thanksgiving holiday period.

She said: “It was good. People were shopping. I’m just working on our figures right now but I am not sure what we ended up doing.” Ms Farrington added that Lorene’s preparations for the upcoming Christmas season were in full gear, as she added: “We are getting in our inventory now. So we hope that people are going to shop.”

Expressing concerns about the continuing fall-out from Hurricane-Dorian, she said: “I think the hurricane will impact what people are spending. So we can only cross our fingers and hope for the best. All of the VAT and the increases in the prices at the food store and everything, it all affects us.”

Anthony Maycock, store manager at Kelly’s Home Centre in the Mall at Marathon, told Tribune Business: “Sales went great for Black Friday Shopping. We expect, as we get busy, our store hours are going to be open on Sundays now from December 1 straight through the next three Sundays before Christmas.

“When you look at it now as far as the numbers and crowd, we are doing much better than we did last year. We are expecting great things for Christmas. As a matter of fact, the crowd is already coming in now shopping for Christmas.”

Josette Christie, Aliv’s chief marketing officer, said: “We expect a very successful Christmas. We just opened our Cable Beach store and that is doing very well so far. We expect all of our stores to do well this year.

“After the hurricane and coming out of it, and how well we did with our support of the community, the people are really happy and very loyal to us because they see that we are really here for the people. We will do great things for this Christmas season.”

As for the hotels, Baha Mar’s booking pace was said to be “very robust” leading into the Christmas season from this past Thanksgiving Holiday weekend.

Robert Sands, its senior vice-president of government and exterrnal relations, told Tribune Business: “We’re still in the Thanksgiving holiday period so we’re still working. We saw business for this Thanksgiving holiday that was as good as last year. We are encouraged that our booking pace has increased post-Dorian.”

Explaining that Thanksgiving was a good indication as to how the Christmas season may turn out, Mr Sands added: “Our booking pace is very robust and has improved, and we are very encouraged by the results. We should be as good or better than last year.”