The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

RETAILERS reported a “spending rebound” on Black Friday as shoppers queued from 5am to seek-out bargains leading into the Christmas holiday shopping season.

Patrice Thompson, Aliv’s general manager for New Providence, told Tribune Business: “Aliv is experiencing a very strong Black Friday as we acquired a record number of new customers as well as great momentum with our existing customers.

“We are seeing high volumes of visits to all of our retail stores in all islands, and a lot of interest at our pop-up locations as well. We have provided our customers with many ways to shop, ensuring safety at each touch point.

“We are also expecting this momentum to continue through the weekend as we continue to have exciting deals. We feel very optimistic about the rest of the holiday season as all indicators point to a rebound in spending.”

Brent Burrows, CBS Bahamas (Commonwealth Building Supplies) president added: “Things went extremely well. We had a great day. The crowd were well behaved and we had good police presence.”

Consumers were lined outside of CBS before 5am on Friday morning in hopes of beating the Black Friday rush so they could exploit price discounts. “We opened at 5am, and we had quite a number of people outside. We had security posted outside of our doors from 2am just to ensure things ran smoothly,” Mr Burrows added.

Adam Treco, managing director of Fine Threads, said: “Normally on Black Friday we would have a sale in our store, but we just don’t have the inventory for that because of the logistics challenges. So we are having a regular sidewalk sale, which is more of a clearance sale.

He added that Fine Threads has experienced “nothing but headaches” for the past three quarters in getting inventory from California and North America in general. “I’m sure you have heard that finding the Playstation five and the new Xbox is difficult because there is a chip shortage,” Mr Treco added.

“But, relative to how things are going, it is pretty OK compared to a normal year because we just don’t have what we normally would have.” At this time, Fine Threads would normally have 80 percent of its winter inventory in stock, but are currently around just 25 percent du to supply chain backlogs.

Despite this, Mr Treco is remaining “optimistic” for the Christmas season as he feels the shipping and logistics challenges will eventually work themselves out. “The demand is coming up but we just don’t have the supply. That seems to be the problem in general,” he added.

Wanda Cartwright, general manager of Rubin’s Palmdale, said of Black Friday: “We didn’t have a sale on but things weren’t that bad.” She was concerned that consumers were staying at home rather than shopping, but said it was still a good day for Rubins.