By Ashlee Sargeant on Thursday, 24 February, 2022 at 02:39 PM

Retail businesses in the City of Bridgetown are breathing a sigh of relief as face-to-face classes resume.

Assistant manager of the Payless Shoestore branch in Bridgetown, Kirk Griffith says the beginning stages of COVID-19 impacted his branch significantly. Griffith recalls sales profits decreasing by roughly 60 per cent.

To ensure he and his staff were not too heavily impacted, they relied heavily on the tourist industry and the students who attend nursery, university, and college to stay afloat.

“It was tough, especially in the economic climate that the country is in right now but we as a company relied on the fact that there is not a lot of quality choices the public has to choose from. We also created different discounts such as the buy one get the next half off so that allowed us to stay above water,” says Griffith.

The assistant manager adds that now that face-to-face classes have resumed, he is confident that the company's profit margins will return to what they once were or even double as long as the business continues to approach aggressively every opportunity to grow.

Pamela Ceru, supervisor of the Duty-Free Caribbean branch in Bridgetown agrees with those sentiments. Ceru says the location of the store played a major role in not only the lack of layoffs within the department but also in the sales they made during the difficult time.

“During the lockdown school supplies, textbooks and uniforms weren’t selling; our sales mainly came from the food court and the home décor section of the store. Sometimes we would have the occasional school supply purchase but nothing to impact our sales margin. Now that schools have reopened, we are seeing these purchases being placed once again,” says Ceru.

Additionally, Janelle Best, senior sales clerk at Abed's, Bridgetown is ecstatic for the busy days to start again because that would mean she can bring a steady income into the household, and she would not always be home due to the company’s employee rotation.

“I don’t think it is going to go back to normal, but business has picked back up again. At one point our only clientele was the persons who made masks but now that persons have somewhere to be and school has started back, business will booming in comparison to the previous year,” Best said.