The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Executives at a major Freeport hardware store have revealed they were “just as shocked as anyone else” to hear “rumours” of its demise following the hit from Hurricane Dorian.

James Rolle, Dolly Madison Homecentre’s general manager, told Tribune Business that suggestions the company is set to close are untrue. “We don’t know anything about the store closing down,” he said. “We heard rumours going around ourselves, and we are just as shocked as anyone else.

“We are just trying to see how much more space we can provide to open up more of our space. We moved from our service department, and we are now we are operating out of our loading dock or upper warehouse. I spoke personally to the company’s owner just recently, who gave me no indication that the store is closing down or going out of business.”

Mr Rolle said Dolly Madison was awaiting payment of its Dorian-related insurance claim so it can fully restock and re-open. “We have been able to duplicate 80 percent of the inventory we used to have in the main store, but not at the scale where we used to have it open for the public,” he added.

“We are going to be here in our upstairs loading dock for a while. We have not been able to make any clean-up in the main store, and we are still working with the insurance company on our settlement. The insurance company is still going through the assessments of our main store. We are pleased with the response from the community. We are steadily seeing an increase in the volume of business on a weekly basis.”

Mr Rolle continued: “We went through a whole lot during Dorian and we just can’t open back up like that. We have put up signage in our main marquees in order to let people know that we are still open.”

He suggested that what may have given persons the impression Dolly Madison was going out of business was the removal of all damaged inventory from its store it to the landfill. “The clean-up is ongoing. We got rid of all of the debris from the front of our store. Mainly the damaged inventory we got rid of,” Mr Rolle said.