Despite a heavy flow of foot traffic through Bridgetown, store owners have found sales for the Yuletide season unusually low.
Just over a week before Christmas Day decorations were among the areas which proprietors saw a cool down in sales. Garlands, Christmas balls, wreaths and tree toppers did not see much movement at the décor section of Bridgetown Duty Free.
It was unusual for this time according to one of the senior sales staff, who declined to be named.
“There are a lot of people passing around but no one shopping. Compared to last year for example, in here would be burst and you’d barely be able to look up,” the staff member said.
Sales clerk supervisor at SY Adams, High Street, Maria Alleyne, said sales were a bit slow.
“This week you should get more people because right now you can see how slow it is. The things selling are mostly curtains, decorations and those kinds of things,” she said.
Customers admitted that so far they were window shopping, preferring to do their final haul closer to Christmas Day.
“I usually wait until Christmas Eve to shop, right now I’m just looking about,” said Joan Howard who was looking through the décor section at the Big Tang People’s Mart in
St Michael Row.
“I have not really shopped for the past four years for Christmas so this year I decided that I would get everything . . . from decorations to blinds,” she added.
Another person who was looking and not buying was Teca Jemmott who made it a practice to do her Christmas shopping as early as possible.
“I done with that,” she said. “I already got up my colours, something white and silver with some garland around the door and that is that.”
Jemmott was browsing the aisles of Woolworth in Prince William Henry Street.
She was there mostly for her daughter who liked green-coloured decorations.
Faith Walcott-Worrell usually shopped early but this season found her now browsing Woolworth for decorations with glitter and lights to place outside and around her house.
Martin Bryan, managing director of Woolworth said their November period was slow and with a slight uptick in December the sales have evened out.
“We don’t have any big set of rush going on as now . . . we are fully stocked, we have all of our stuff in . . . they just recently came in,” Bryan said.
He added that their decorations were a big hit with sales especially their new range of wooden items from Denmark.
“Customers are very pleased this year with our selections.”
