A?SPANKING?new wholesale shopping complex offering a wide assortment of goods ranging from electronic equipment to meat products opened its doors to hundreds of customers at Tudor Bridge, St Michael, yesterday.
The People’s Market, a division of R. L. Seale &?Company, with prominent businessman Sir David Seale as its chairman, is employing 60 Barbadians and selling items such as flat screen TVs, DVD?players, microwaves, toasters, coffee makers, laptop bags, rugs, and the groceries one would expect to find in a supermarket.
General manager Peter Chandler said that unlike other wholesale stores, you don’t have to be a member to shop.
“This is a whosesale store without the membership requirement. Sir David strongly believes that one should not have to pay to shop. There is no membership fee, anyone can come and enjoy the great prices that we have here.
“This is about the people and accommodating the average man. Our prices are very competitive and in many cases they are some of the lowest in the country,” Chandler said.
The store has huge ceiling fans and no air conditioning, which, according to Chandler, would have spiked up electricity rates and would have meant a higher percentage mark-up on products.
“The electricity bill generated by the air conditioning would have been high in this type of operation. Sir David made a decision not to do that at this time but to use other methods of cooling the store in order to keep the cost of prices down.
“We really want to have some of the best prices in Barbados, so we found ways in which we can cool the area and in doing so, maintain reasonable prices for the people,” Chandler said.
Chandler, 42, told the WEEKEND?NATION, the store was not selling fruits and vegetables, so as not to offer competition to vendors in nearby Eagle Hall.
“We do not want to compete with the vendors at the Eagle Hall Market just over a 100 feet away. We do not want to take away from the vendors’ livelihood, so Sir David took the decision not to sell vegetables for that reason,” he said.
Chandler added that some of his staff were university students.
“We took that decision because we wanted to give the students work experience that we hope will help them transition faster and better from a school setting to a work setting.
“It is a way of letting them know what to expect in the world of work,” he said.
The People’s Market is the newest addition to the diverse family of the R. L. Seale Group that also includes a bottling plant, a rum refinery, a distribution company and a canning plant. (MK)
