The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A major Bahamian retailer yesterday confirmed it has expanded to the Harbour Bay Shopping Centre in a bid to reach consumers who would never travel to its main location.

Jason Watson, Automotive Industrial Distributors (AID) president, told Tribune Business the company had fulfilled its long-standing ambition to establish a presence in the East Bay Street-based shopping plaza with the February 1 opening of its 5,500 square foot space next to Logo’s Bookstore.

“The space was available. I saw that back in September or so, and always wanted to get a location in that area,” he explained. “A lot of customers that go there would never find themselves going to Wulff Road, so we wanted to open a store there and the space was available. In the Mall [at Marathon], we have a lot of customers that go there but do not come to Wulff Road.

“We took the lease, but couldn’t get the shelving in until late December. I was hoping to open before Christmas, but it didn’t work out. We got the shelving in by late December, and in January we got everything in place and opened on February 1.”

Mr Watson said AID’s Harbour Bay location will stock parts, hardware and housewares, adding that supply chain issues caused by a shipping container shortage meant it had taken “about three to four weeks to get everything in”.

Around ten employees will be stationed at the store as AID expands staffing, and ramps up training, ahead of the planned reopening of its redeveloped Blue Hill Road location in June 2021. The retailer, which is one of the few in expansion mode amid COVID-19, has been “adding workers pretty much constantly to get them trained and ready for that location”.

Mr Watson explained: “Once we got the lease we sent some staff over from Blue Hill Road over there [Harbour Bay]. We’re hiring constantly. We hired three people last week, and the week before we hired four people, so we’re pretty much adding new people weekly.”

AID is not the only new addition at Harbour Bay. Aliv, the mobile operator, opened an outlet at the eastern New Providence location just prior to Christmas as it expands its retail network and staffing levels with the easing of the Government’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Damian Blackburn, Aliv’s top executive, told this newspaper: “We opened a new store in Harbour Bay just before Christmas, which created new employment opportunities, and we are going to open a new store in Abaco.

“We have had to grow again with small numbers in some strategic areas. We’re growing jobs in some different areas. We have grown the sales team again to keep up with demand, and some of the areas where we had to right-size the business due to the [COVID-19] downturn.”