The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Many Bahamian jewellery retailers shrugged off early holiday season pessimism to report “good” Christmas sales that beat 2018 figures by up to eight percent.

Denise Cooper, area retail manager for Colombian Emeralds, told Tribune Business: “This is our best year yet. Best one we have had in a little while. We were up eight percent from last year with our smaller items moving more than the larger ones.

“We’re hoping that this would carry on into the New Year, but the majority of our sales - some 90 percent of our sales - came from locals. You know that in January locals don’t really spend, so we have to go back and depend on our tourists. Last year we had 75 percent of our sales that came from locals, with the rest from our tourists.”

Ms Cooper added: “Bear in mind I include our Freeport stores in this increase as well, and you know the situation in Freeport with Hurricane Dorian, which attributed to a small increase, but overall it is still an increase and we are happy.”

Andrew Parker, marketing manager for the Coin of the Realm, said of the Christmas season: “The volume is up and it is a good year.” He was unable to give a percentage on how much sales had increased compared to the prior year, and added: “We haven’t calculated that yet. We won’t calculate that until after New Year’s Eve for the end of the month.”

Navin Biswal, chief financial officer for Park Lane Jewellers, said: “Christmas sales were good, but it is down from last year. I don’t have the numbers by how much it was down compared to last year, but I can say that smaller items were moving more than the larger items this year.”

Prior to Christmas Eve, some downtown Nassau jewellers had told Tribune Business they were concerned the festive spending season will be a softer than usual, with one saying: “We were a bit concerned because Christmas falls during the middle of the week, and whenever that happens business is normally a little different.”

Another told this newspaper that their Christmas season forecast was “not particularly outstanding”, blaming this on “a combination of things” from Hurricane Dorian to the value-added tax increase, in addition to the gap between the cost of living and what persons have to spend “widening”.