GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

“You stand­ing in the book­store look­ing at one text­book for over $2oo, and you know you still have to buy gro­ceries, light bill to pay, and rent com­ing due,” shared one weary par­ent.

That sharp dilem­ma cap­tures the re­al­i­ty every Au­gust, as fam­i­lies across T&T brace for the back-to-school crunch.

Par­ents need to bal­ance work, fam­i­ly bud­gets, and the an­nu­al scram­ble to gear up their chil­dren for a new aca­d­e­m­ic term amid ris­ing re­tail prices, tight house­hold bud­gets, and on­go­ing for­eign ex­change con­straints fac­ing lo­cal im­porters.

For many fam­i­lies, back-to-school prepa­ra­tion is no longer just about fill­ing a book­list—it is a bal­anc­ing act of ba­sic sur­vival.

Par­ents are tak­ing a fine-tooth comb to their spend­ing, care­ful­ly com­par­ing prices across dif­fer­ent re­tail­ers and tim­ing their pur­chas­es around week­ly su­per­mar­ket spe­cials to en­sure their chil­dren have ad­e­quate meals, snacks, and ba­sic sta­tionery with­out sac­ri­fic­ing es­sen­tial house­hold util­i­ties.

Look­ing at the com­mer­cial land­scape, Vivek Char­ran, own­er of the well-known book and school sup­ply chain, told the Busi­ness Guardian that over­all re­tail trade has re­mained steady.

“We can’t al­so say that it’s been a very brisk trade. We have not seen an ac­tu­al in­crease in sales com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. This year seems to be hold­ing steady, close to to last year. Ini­tial­ly maybe a bit dif­fi­cult in Ju­ly. The sea­son has yet to to con­clude as it will have about two weeks again be­fore the end of the back-to-school pe­ri­od when par­ents will fin­ish pur­chas­ing all their needs,” he ex­plained.

One point of re­lief for par­ents this sea­son stemmed from re­cent gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives lever­ag­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools to re­view and stream­line rec­om­mend­ed book lists, help­ing curb ex­ces­sive re­quire­ments. “Cer­tain­ly the gov­ern­ment util­is­ing AI for the first time would have re­duced the cost of book lists for most par­ents dur­ing the ini­tial phase of the roll­out of the AI pro­gramme,” Char­ran ac­knowl­edged.

Forex al­lo­ca­tions dri­ve up costs

How­ev­er, while AI-dri­ven list re­duc­tions of­fer some fi­nan­cial re­lief, they do lit­tle to solve the sys­temic sup­ply is­sues weigh­ing down the broad­er re­tail mar­ket.

Be­yond shift­ing con­sumer shop­ping habits, book­sellers and mer­chants face a far deep­er struc­tur­al bar­ri­er: se­vere­ly re­strict­ed ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.

Char­ran point­ed out that the cur­rent for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion sys­tem fails to pri­ori­tise ba­sic ed­u­ca­tion­al needs.

This bot­tle­neck di­rect­ly im­pacts uni­form sup­plies, where T&T re­lies en­tire­ly on im­port­ed tex­tiles due to a lack of lo­cal fab­ric mills.

“The lack of forex, or I should say, back-to-school es­sen­tials not be­ing pri­ori­tised for forex as some things are, has led to dif­fi­cul­ties, and it would lead to dif­fi­cul­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly in things like school uni­forms. School uni­forms, I mean, we don’t have fab­ric mills here, so most of the fab­ric has to be im­port­ed. Not all fab­ric costs the same. Schools tend to de­ter­mine what type of uni­form they want, the qual­i­ty of the uni­form they want, and this would dif­fer in cost de­pend­ing on the fab­ric. So most fab­ric has to be made from scratch in a fab­ric mill in the Far East and im­port­ed in­to Trinidad.

“The lack of forex has made sourc­ing uni­form and sourc­ing uni­form fab­ric quite dif­fi­cult. And even though many of the book­stores are util­is­ing lo­cal tai­lors or, let’s say, lo­cal small fac­to­ries, small busi­ness­es that are sewing uni­forms, the fact re­mains that the short sup­ply of forex for things like school uni­forms does af­fect the sup­ply of it,” Char­ran fur­ther ex­plained.

The forex pinch ex­tends equal­ly to stan­dard sta­tionery items.

Re­tail­ers who pre­vi­ous­ly im­port­ed note­books, pens, and pa­per sup­plies di­rect­ly from for­eign man­u­fac­tur­ers at bulk rates are now forced to pur­chase through a small pool of lo­cal dis­trib­u­tors who se­cure forex al­lo­ca­tions.

Loss of sum­mer jobs

The re­tail squeeze cre­ates an ad­di­tion­al hard­ship for strug­gling fam­i­lies: a sharp re­duc­tion in sea­son­al em­ploy­ment for old­er chil­dren and teenagers. His­tor­i­cal­ly, book­stores dou­ble their work­force dur­ing Ju­ly and Au­gust to han­dle the hol­i­day rush, pro­vid­ing vi­tal in­come for young peo­ple try­ing to as­sist their par­ents with ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­pens­es.

“One of the in­ter­est­ing ob­ser­va­tions is that dur­ing this pe­ri­od in time, in the back-to-school pe­ri­od over sum­mer, book­stores across T&T would nor­mal­ly hire a lot of young peo­ple, you know, to work as temps dur­ing this pe­ri­od of time,” Char­ran ob­served.

How­ev­er, flat sales vol­umes have forced mer­chants to freeze tem­po­rary hir­ing, clos­ing off an im­por­tant fi­nan­cial life­line.

“This year, un­for­tu­nate­ly, I can’t say that book­stores have hired a lot of peo­ple,” Char­ran re­vealed adding, the rea­son for that is ob­vi­ous­ly be­cause of the lev­el of sales.

“The lev­el of sales is still not what it used to be. You know, we’re hop­ing that things would get bet­ter, but giv­en the very short pe­ri­od, giv­en the con­straints on fi­nances and the fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions that book­stores have, it con­tin­ues to be and will be dif­fi­cult, and it will be dif­fi­cult for us even af­ter the back-to-school pe­ri­od, go­ing for­ward.”

Adap­tive sur­vival strate­gies

Faced with these mul­ti-front pres­sures, par­ents are lean­ing heav­i­ly on sec­ond-hand mar­kets, char­i­ta­ble as­sis­tance, and pub­lic sup­port pro­grammes to get by.

David Ram­cha­ran, man­ag­er of Unique Book­stores,which sells both new and used books, not­ed that while sales re­main steady com­pared to last year, more cus­tomers are us­ing state and cor­po­rate as­sis­tance pro­grammes.

“They’re just buy­ing the same amount,” Ram­cha­ran said not­ing, “We’re al­so get­ting a lot of cus­tomers with vouch­ers from com­pa­nies and the gov­ern­ment as well.”

The pre-owned book mar­ket con­tin­ues to serve as an es­sen­tial safe­ty valve for par­ents look­ing to slash their list ex­pens­es in half.

Con­cur­rent­ly, dig­i­tal in­te­gra­tion in schools is of­fer­ing tar­get­ed fi­nan­cial re­lief for spe­cif­ic grade lev­els as stu­dents en­ter­ing form two re­ceived state-is­sued lap­tops dur­ing their Form One year, hence par­ents of Form Two stu­dents are spared from pur­chas­ing phys­i­cal text­books this term.

How­ev­er, tra­di­tion­al hard­copy books re­main com­pul­so­ry across oth­er sec­ondary grades.

For store op­er­a­tors, ear­ly in­ven­to­ry plan­ning helped avoid sup­ply chain de­lays.

To sur­vive the slow-mov­ing mar­ket, in­for­mal ven­dors and street mer­chants have al­so had to ad­just their ex­pec­ta­tions.

Ijah Noel, an in­de­pen­dent sec­ond-hand book ven­dor who has trad­ed along Port-of-Spain’s busy Hen­ry Street for the past four years, ob­served that over­all foot traf­fic and sales have re­mained slug­gish as par­ents strict­ly pri­ori­tise es­sen­tial ti­tles.

Ac­cord­ing to Noel, par­ents are care­ful­ly eval­u­at­ing every list, pri­or­i­tiz­ing which books they think their chil­dren would ac­tu­al­ly use in the class­room and skip­ping the ones they be­lieve they could do with­out.

De­spite the hes­i­tant trade, Noel and neigh­bour­ing street ven­dors re­main hope­ful that a surge of last-minute shop­pers in the fi­nal days of Au­gust would help off­set an oth­er­wise qui­et sea­son.