At least three busi­ness­es have added new op­er­a­tions as there are signs of eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and they seek to cap­i­talise on the Christ­mas rush.

On Oc­to­ber 30, the Home Store opened its fifth lo­ca­tion at the new East Gates Mall in Trinci­ty.

Chair­man of LJ Williams, Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh, ad­mit­ted in his com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial re­port for the half year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 2022, that it had to make up for lost ground.

He said, “The Home Store re­sults for FY2022 were im­pact­ed by the 2021 May to mid-Au­gust store clo­sures due to COVID lock­down. As a re­sult, the cur­rent half-year shows sales growth of 90 per cent over the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2021 as all stores were open dur­ing this pe­ri­od. We end­ed FY2022 with ex­cess in­ven­to­ry and more pro­mo­tions and sales were run to help bring our in­ven­to­ry down to a man­age­able lev­el.”

He con­firmed the group was look­ing to­wards the De­cem­ber pe­ri­od for a boost.

“We ex­pect the third Quar­ter end­ing De­cem­ber 2022 to be strong as we con­tin­ue to see re­silience in con­sumer shop­ping which ben­e­fits our dis­tri­b­u­tion and re­tail busi­ness­es,” said Ba­hadoors­ingh.

The de­ci­sion to open the new Trinci­ty lo­ca­tion was said to be a strate­gic one, as The Home Store sought to de­vel­op a pres­ence in the east­ern re­gion of Trinidad.

The com­pa­ny told the Busi­ness Guardian, “Our Mar­ket­ing de­part­ment pays close at­ten­tion to feed­back we get from our cus­tomers. We have a very ac­tive so­cial me­dia pres­ence and as a re­sult di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with our cus­tomers on an al­most dai­ly ba­sis.

“For over a year, our cus­tomers have been re­quest­ing a store in the East. Based on that con­stant feed­back, we had been ac­tive­ly seek­ing suit­able lo­ca­tions and the ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed it­self at East Gates Mall in Trinci­ty.”

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ued, “East Gates Mall is ide­al­ly lo­cat­ed close to the East­ern Main Road, Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way and the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, mak­ing it very ac­ces­si­ble. It is well po­si­tioned to serve the com­mu­ni­ties lo­cat­ed from Tu­na­puna to Ari­ma.”

How­ev­er, the Home Store team ad­mit­ted that there were some chal­lenges as it sought to build the new lo­ca­tion, which even led to some de­lays in the open­ing of its Guyana lo­ca­tion.

The com­pa­ny said, “Lo­gis­tics, in par­tic­u­lar the ship­ping as­pect, con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge. As an ex­am­ple, we had to di­vert the store shelv­ing for our Guyana store to the Trinidad store due to ship­ping de­lays.

De­spite the chal­lenges, we have been for­tu­nate to have a land­lord who un­der­stood our needs and worked with us to en­sure we can open be­fore No­vem­ber. Our staff have been great and worked dili­gent­ly to en­sure the store was ready for the open­ing.”

The Home Store felt the gam­ble on ex­pan­sion now, de­spite the lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues, was spurred by the per­for­mance of the West Mall branch which was opened last year and has been sim­i­lar­ly ex­pand­ed ahead of the Christ­mas sea­son.

The com­pa­ny said, “We have been en­cour­aged by the re­sponse we got when we opened our last branch at The Falls at West­mall in No­vem­ber 2021 in the midst of COVID-19 re­stric­tions. We have since ex­pand­ed the size of that store for the Christ­mas pe­ri­od.”

The com­pa­ny said it was for­tu­nate to con­tin­ue to see the Home Store’s brand’s growth in pop­u­lar­i­ty.”

“The brand con­tin­ues to go from strength to strength since we opened 14 years ago in Barataria in No­vem­ber 2008. In ad­di­tion to a loy­al cus­tomer base, we have been quite suc­cess­ful in at­tract­ing new gen­er­a­tions of home­own­ers.

“This trend has con­tin­ued de­spite the chal­lenges of COVID-19, eco­nom­ic chal­lenges im­pact­ing our pop­u­la­tion and the on­go­ing chal­lenge of ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change to pay sup­pli­ers,” said the com­pa­ny.

The Home Store’s planned ex­pan­sion ahead of Christ­mas isn’t fin­ished, as Ba­hadoors­ingh con­firmed in fi­nan­cial re­port that the com­pa­ny’s first in­ter­na­tion­al branch at Ama­zo­nia Mall in Guyana is to be opened by the end of No­vem­ber 2022.

An­oth­er brand hop­ing to seize an op­por­tu­ni­ty through ex­pan­sion is Mr Ran­go Cook­house, which opened its sec­ond lo­ca­tion at C3 Cen­tre Shop­ping Mall in San Fer­nan­do on Oc­to­ber 20.

Like The Home Store, the restau­rant saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reach a new seg­ment of the is­land.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Valmi­ki Nand­lal told the Busi­ness Guardian that the brand saw the C3 branch as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand its clien­tèle in South Trinidad.

The com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly on­ly op­er­at­ed in Price Plaza, since it was es­tab­lished ten years ago.

“Our sales per­cent­age from the south mar­ket wasn’t that big com­pared to Cen­tral and North. So that was one of the main rea­sons for the ex­pan­sion to C3, to ex­pand our reach and to make ease of trans­porta­tion or ease of move­ment for peo­ple from south­ern ar­eas who would like to try our food. Es­pe­cial­ly with C3 be­ing a thriv­ing mall right now,” said Nand­lal.

“It was the best de­ci­sion to go to C3 so peo­ple from South Trinidad would be able to en­joy our food clos­er to them and give us a mid­dle point for per­sons from Cou­va to Pe­nal maybe, where­as peo­ple (north of) Cou­va to Port- of-Spain would go to the Ch­agua­nas area so kind of give us a bet­ter reach for peo­ple to come to the restau­rant and al­so to bring bet­ter aware­ness (to our brand).”

He al­so ex­plained that the restau­rant is hop­ing to cater for the im­mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty and the el­der­ly who were a bit more re­luc­tant to dine out since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“One of the ideas that we had, was to open up in C3 to make the court­yard a bet­ter space for all types of peo­ple,” he said.

Nand­lal added the com­pa­ny was still nav­i­gat­ing sup­ply chain is­sues as there were is­sues with sup­ply ear­li­er in the year, the restau­rant de­pend­ed large­ly on lo­cal pro­duce. He ex­plained the ex­pan­sion al­so helped with ob­tain­ing sup­ply due to the fact the brand now could place larg­er or­ders which im­proved their ne­go­ti­a­tions and agree­ments with dis­trib­u­tors.

He al­so ex­plained the up­com­ing Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons were mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tors for the move.

“One of the main rea­sons for ex­pand­ing now, it’s be­cause we are in the peak of the sea­son­al times which is from No­vem­ber to De­cem­ber which is the Christ­mas sea­son in­to a Car­ni­val sea­son next year and sup­ply so far hasn’t been too bad,” said Nand­lal.

CEO and own­er of Dwellings Fur­ni­ture Store Luis Car­ril­lo sim­i­lar­ly point­ed to the up­com­ing fes­tive sea­son as a main dri­ver of the brand’s de­ci­sion to open a new branch on Wright­son Road.

Dwellings had pre­vi­ous­ly op­er­at­ed one lo­ca­tion, in Ch­agua­nas.

Car­ril­lo felt the ex­pan­sion would now ben­e­fit them giv­en their strate­gic lo­ca­tion be­tween Port-of-Spain and West Trinidad.

“We be­lieve that be­ing able to re­tail from this area in the largest trade area in Trinidad, which is Port-of-Spain and the West will ben­e­fit our over­all busi­ness in the coun­try,” he said at the branch’s VIP launch ear­ly in Oc­to­ber.