It’s al­most that time of the year again when the streets and stores are laced with red and hearts for the im­pend­ing cel­e­bra­tions of love.

How­ev­er, not every­thing seems to be a bed of ros­es, as fes­tiv­i­ties seem to be a bit mut­ed this year.

And Car­ni­val may have a part to play with that.

Store­own­ers, man­agers and even ven­dors say they are yet to see the an­nu­al rush of those pur­chas­ing lit­tle to­kens for their loved ones to com­mem­o­rate Valen­tine’s Day.

Ac­cord­ing to Crys­tal Ra­j­coomar, a florist and grand­daugh­ter of the own­er of Gar­den of Eden Flower and Gift Shop on Queen Street, Port-of-Spain, “I wouldn’t say this is one of the worst, but it is one of the slow­est we’ve ex­pe­ri­enced in a long time be­cause of Car­ni­val...every time there is Car­ni­val around Valen­tine’s time we are al­ways im­pact­ed be­cause of the fetes and the sea­son; a lot of peo­ple pay more at­ten­tion to that.”

In light of the sea­son, Ra­j­coomar said things seemed to be slow­ly pick­ing up.

“For the be­gin­ning of this month we ac­tu­al­ly thought we were go­ing to have a re­al­ly bad Valen­tine’s, last week we had no or­ders com­ing in, this week was very slow as well but be­tween yes­ter­day and to­day, it kind of picked up the pace, or­ders start­ed to come in slow­ly for de­liv­er­ies.”

De­spite this, not all hope is lost in their at­tempts to help spread love.

“On Valen­tine’s Day it­self, there is where the rush comes in, the day be­fore or the day of.”

Ra­j­coomar said she ex­pect­ed the bulk of sales to hap­pen on Mon­day since a lot of con­sumers tend to im­pulse buy.

While she is keep­ing her fin­gers crossed for an in­crease in sales over the com­ing days, she not­ed there was a de­crease in the de­mand for flow­ers this year com­pared to their past years.

She said be­ing con­ve­nient­ly lo­cat­ed in the cap­i­tal city, works out well for their busi­ness when hol­i­days are dur­ing the week.

Ra­j­coomar shared that they did not ex­pand their flower of­fer­ings be­yond what they usu­al­ly pro­vide in an­tic­i­pa­tion of slow sales and the Car­ni­val sea­son. Her rea­son­ing was, “fi­nan­cial­ly peo­ple aren’t able to af­ford a lot of flow­ers. We still get the crowd but they won’t buy like they’re used to.”

The store own­er, Laal­maan Ra­j­coomar al­so stressed that it was dif­fi­cult to im­port flow­ers from oth­er coun­tries.

“We al­ways bring flow­ers from Colom­bia and Ecuador and Mi­a­mi but the air­crafts al­ways break­ing down, not in ser­vice or hav­ing great dif­fi­cul­ties. Most of the time air­crafts raise their rate so it’s dif­fi­cult for me to price our flow­ers, we have to pay du­ties, air­craft, han­dling charges, cus­toms and trans­port from the air­port to the store,” he said.

Laal­maan said they have to put out a lot of mon­ey for the sea­son, with­out know­ing if they will be able to re­make it.

“Valen­tines is usu­al­ly our best sales and now we hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting flow­ers and cus­tomers not show­ing up be­cause of Car­ni­val.”

To ac­com­mo­date every­one’s pock­ets, Crys­tal said their shop of­fers a va­ri­ety of items at vary­ing costs, in­clud­ing the sea­son’s favourite, ros­es.

“A sin­gle rose could go for $25, in a vase you could get it for $80 and in a bou­quet with a wrap you could get it for like $50. Half a dozen in a vase for like $300, a dozen for like $690, we have dif­fer­ent types of vas­es, we al­so have dif­fer­ent types and colours of ros­es like the par­rot ros­es which are a lit­tle more ex­pen­sive and can go for $30.”

She added per­sons would come in and buy straight from the shelves, rather than per­son­alise bou­quets since these tend to be more cost­ly.

Crys­tal re­vealed the price of im­port­ing flow­ers had in­creased al­so but was un­able to give a fig­ure due to fluc­tu­at­ing costs.

The florist added that the avail­abil­i­ty of forex “has af­fect­ed us tremen­dous­ly but thank­ful­ly our banks have tried very hard to make it work and get our pay­ments on time to our sup­pli­ers.”

She stat­ed they had raised the prices of their flow­ers, but not ex­or­bi­tant­ly since they would not have been able to sus­tain their busi­ness. This has not af­fect­ed their reg­u­lar cus­tomers how­ev­er, since the florist added “they un­der­stand that our prices are hiked (im­ports) so we have to raise our prices if it’s just by a dol­lar or two we try to keep it at the bare min­i­mum.”

One ob­ser­va­tion the woman made since the pan­dem­ic be­gan was the up­take in the avail­abil­i­ty of flower cours­es, which af­fect­ed the way pa­trons pur­chased flow­ers.

“With all the free cours­es that were giv­en, you know the flower cours­es a lot of peo­ple have de­vel­oped small busi­ness­es where they’re mak­ing their own arrange­ments and bou­quets as a side­line job to make an ex­tra in­come and this year be­cause of that we have seen a lot more whole­sale or­ders and pur­chas­ing, peo­ple buy­ing packs and packs of ros­es. These aren’t flower shop own­ers just by reg­u­lar per­sons that don’t have a busi­ness or any­thing, just do­ing it on the side­line.”

While the store of­fers a va­ri­ety of flow­ers, oth­er to­kens were al­so up for pur­chase, how­ev­er, they were not as cov­et­ed as the blooms.

Ra­j­coomar said while they had not seen any in­di­ca­tions of mar­riage pro­pos­als thus far, the com­mon trend this year was writ­ing cards ask­ing sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers to be their Valen­tine.

Both Ra­j­coomars hope that the sit­u­a­tion will turn around, and sales would have a steady in­crease in the com­ing days.

Sev­er­al oth­er ven­dors had sim­i­lar con­cerns about slow sales but this may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be due to Car­ni­val.

Tri­cia Kow­lessar of Pre­cious Mo­ments said that in her ex­pe­ri­ence Valen­tines is main­ly “im­pulse buy­ing.”

She ex­pects an in­crease in sales by to­mor­row or even Tues­day.

Kow­lessar said there was a de­cline in the de­mand for items like choco­lates, and ted­dies. Adding that peo­ple were con­scious of the amount they spent on gifts, “they not cross­ing that $250 bud­get.”

She al­so stat­ed that while there were cheap­er op­tions avail­able for cer­tain goods, con­sumers pre­ferred to stick with the known brands.

Sim­i­lar to the oth­er in­dus­tries, Aman Jew­eller’s own­er, Aman Har­ryper­sad said “per­sons have not start­ed to shop for Valen­tines as yet” de­scrib­ing sales as slow.

An­oth­er sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the pop­u­lar es­tab­lish­ment, Won­der­ful World, stat­ed that she usu­al­ly sees a spike in sales clos­er to the day of or the day be­fore Valen­tine’s Day since “Tri­nis are late shop­pers, they like that adren­a­line rush.”

She al­so dis­closed that more men were shop­ping than women. When asked what they were look­ing for, she re­spond­ed, “Every­thing, they mak­ing up box for their madam or who­ev­er. They would throw in like a lin­gerie, a body mist, a cream, hand­bags, a lot of the men are buy­ing hand­bags, wal­lets, ac­ces­sories and for work­ing women they might pick up a lunch bag.”

The sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive al­so added that Car­ni­val was not af­fect­ing their sales, since each cel­e­bra­tion has its own niche..

One cus­tomer from the store, Tia Estra­da, agreed with the sales clerk that Car­ni­val would not be af­fect­ing her plans for the day of love since, “It is two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions, two sep­a­rate things to do so it’s not af­fect­ing any­thing.” She added that she would not be par­tak­ing in any fetes on the 14th.

An­oth­er ven­dor from a kiosk booth in Abou­tique Mall, Down­town Port of Spain known as Je­le­na said most of her sales were more Car­ni­val fo­cused.

How­ev­er, those who did come to pur­chase gifts for their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers were drawn to per­fumes.

“For the fe­males, if they’re buy­ing, they don’t re­al­ly work with a price range but males would spend about a $500-600,” she said.

The culi­nary sec­tor did not miss out on their chance to po­ten­tial­ly prof­it on the lovers’ day oc­ca­sion, with many adding love-bird spe­cials to their Valen­tine’s menu. Some es­tab­lish­ments like Texas de Brazil and Pas­sage to Asia have in­tro­duced buf­fet-style din­ing for cou­ples at $445 and $385 re­spec­tive­ly per per­son.

An­oth­er restau­rant, Krave, even went as far as con­sid­er­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son’s im­pact on pa­trons’ sched­ules, im­ple­ment­ing a se­ries of pre-Valen­tine spe­cials.

While some would pre­fer to be wined and dined for the hol­i­day, or even stay in for a cozy date, pro­mot­ers for the Car­ni­val sea­son made sure that there was an abun­dance of op­tions for love­birds who just­ed want­ed to wine.