By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Retailers have indicated a mixed "Black Friday" sales performance with some suffering up to a 45 percent decline compared to 2019 due to depressed consumer spending amid the COVID-19 economy.

Tara Morley, the Bahamas Federation of Retailers (BFR) co-president, told Tribune Business there had been “mixed” reports from her members, ranging from “things went well" to “not as good as last year", with one member revealing sales were down 45 percent.

Ms Morley said many Federation members had already slashed their prices once the Government gave permission for in-store sales to resume so, rather than advertising another sales promotion for Black Friday, they just maintained the discounts implemented earlier in the month.

Craig Pyfrom, DC Technology's managing director, said Black Friday sales had been slow, and added: “I don’t think it will pick up for Cyber Monday either. It has been slow for the past couple of weeks. The last couple of weeks has been worse than ever.”

Acknowledging that Cyber Monday is not a phenomenon here, he said this often saw persons shop abroad or use online shopping platforms. There has also been little response to his advertising campaign.

Keva Gotlieb, the Sports Centre's Sandyport general manager, added: “We are not having any sales, but we're offering our customers reward cards. Where our customers purchase, they get 5 percent back for every dollar they spend. On Friday, they double that. So it's something that would continuously go on, and not just Black Friday, but will be for a week.”

As for Black Friday, she said: “I have not seen the big increase in sales that I we thought we would. We've been advertising online, we've been doing it on Facebook, Instagram and also on the radio. So we're hoping that, you know, people who don't catch the sale on Friday, at least they'll have this week in order to do so but it's definitely a feeling of we're patiently waiting.”

Margo Farrington, Lorene’s chief marketing officer, said: “We can only let so many in at a time. So there's been a line sometimes during Friday. Obviously, it's better for us that we're able to have people in the store, but it definitely hasn't made up for the losses that we've had.”

Cautious about opening up fully, even with the social distancing and hand sanitiser protocols, Ms Farrington said this was the way retailers will have to operate until there is a vaccine in place.