The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Retailers yesterday forecast a bleak Christmas after recently-removed curb-side restrictions further dampened sales expectations amid the COVID-19 pandemic's economic fall-out.

Jack Moree, owner/operator of Sandy’s department store, told Tribune Business: “We're going to have a pre-Thanksgiving sale. Last week is the first week we’ve been open in a month. We can't do that sidewalk thing, that's not going to work. You know, you come here, you want a pair of pants. What are you going to do? You can't come in, so I’ve got to bring 10 different pants for you to have a look at.

"It’s not worth it [to have been open] To turn it on, the air conditioning costs us about $10,000 a month. So we're going to turn it on for what? And we have to pay for staff. It’s not worth it and everybody is finding it like that. Those who tried it got burnt, so we just didn't do it.

Mr Moree said Sandy's would have been ready for Christmas season despite the month-long curb-side restrictions because “we don't wait for the last minute or anything; we have our stock".

He added, though: “We we're kind of screwed with back to school, because there was nothing hardly this year and we still have all our school stuff. So only thing is we don’t have to order for next year.

“We're jammed in that way, and we can't order anything else right now because it's not going to be worth it. It’s too late. Too late. It's too late to get Christmas stuff in. It takes time. We’ve got a lot of stuff so we're not going out of stock because this is no Mickey Mouse operation.”

Keva Gotlieb, general manager of the Sports Centre at Sandy Port, added: “This is the second week that we've been open. Thank goodness for that. Because the sidewalk sale definitely was not working for anyone.”

She said it was “too early to tell” if her company had opened in time to save the Christmas season, adding that she was unsure when other industries will re-open and employees be back to work full-time.

Ms Gotlieb said: “Luckily for us here at this location we've got a lot of persons with disposable income, you know, the expatriates. But overall, this year is going to be a tough Christmas.

“Our business is mainly locals, and our biggest customer base is in Atlantis and Baha Mar. All of those workers, they're not working. So it's better than where we were with the curb-side, but we still aren’t on an upswing as yet.”

Anticipating a bleaker than normal Christmas, Ms Gotlieb predicted that even when the major hotels do re-open "those people are just going to be making money to pay bills, because I'm sure they'd be behind on more important expenses than choosing sportswear".

Taiisha Forbes, interim manager at Modernistic Gardens and Pet Supply, said: “This is the second time back up again fully, but this is really a slow season right now anyway. Usually we're getting all of our orders in for Christmas. Normally around this time people just went back to school and stuff like that, so we should be picking up in around the end of the month.”

Ms Forbes said the company would have had to start terminating staff if curb-side restrictions had remained in place any longer, adding: “We're in the middle of getting our stock right now, so the stores will be stocked and everything. We're continuing with the same volume we normally get every year around this month.”