Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

With Christ­mas just hours away, ven­dors across To­ba­go say sales are com­ing in, but not at the pace they have grown ac­cus­tomed to.

Sev­er­al sell­ers de­scribed the sea­son as slow, though not com­plete­ly bleak. Ven­dors said that while there are cus­tomers, the crowds seen for Christ­mas in pre­vi­ous years have not ma­te­ri­alised. They said this has forced them to ad­just their ex­pec­ta­tions and hope for last-minute shop­ping.

Khadi­jah By­ron said busi­ness at her small elec­tron­ics stall has been qui­eter com­pared to last year, even though sales are still oc­cur­ring.

“Well, it’s a bit slow. I wouldn’t lie,” By­ron said. “I’m get­ting a lot of sales, which is good. But it’s not like Christ­mas last year. It was busy and stuff like that.”

She said the dif­fer­ence is no­tice­able, but she is still man­ag­ing to move prod­ucts.

“It’s a lit­tle qui­et, but it’s still get­ting sales,” she said.

An­tho­ny Cipri­ani, who is al­so known as “Fruits King,” said this Christ­mas sea­son has not been as busy as last year.

“The Christ­mas sales are not so 100 at this point in time,” he said. “But I feel we might be im­prov­ing a lit­tle lat­er down in line to­mor­row or so. But right now, it is not as how I want it to be.”

De­spite the slow­er sales, Cipri­ani said he is grate­ful for what­ev­er busi­ness comes his way.

“I thank God, for I leave home with­out 25 cents and I’m go­ing back with 25,” he said. “And that’s most im­por­tant. But I want it to be bet­ter. It must be bet­ter.”

Cipri­ani said the sea­son has not been dif­fi­cult, but cus­tomers ap­pear to be hold­ing on­to their wal­lets and purs­es.

“This sea­son is not no bumpy sea­son,” he said. “It’s just that peo­ple like they’re hold­ing on, or some peo­ple just def­i­nite­ly don’t have.”

He said ven­dors must be grate­ful for what­ev­er they earn and think about oth­ers who are strug­gling.

“And what­ev­er we get, we have to ap­pre­ci­ate it and try to share with oth­ers who don’t have,” he said.

An­oth­er ven­dor, Ru­by Ol­livierre, shared a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence. She said the sea­son start­ed off slow­ly, but she has seen an in­crease in sales in re­cent days.

“Busi­ness has been a lit­tle slow, but for the past few days, it has been speed­ing up a lit­tle,” she said.

She ex­pects the pace to pick up fur­ther as Christ­mas Day ap­proach­es.

“Yeah, it should be very busy to­mor­row,” she said. “It’s Christ­mas. Even though every­body is get­ting re­laxed and giv­ing gifts and stuff.”

She said many shop­pers ap­pear to be wait­ing un­til the last minute to make pur­chas­es, a trend ven­dors said is still com­mon.

Zel­ma John, own­er of a va­ri­ety stall, said busi­ness has been fair, giv­en the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges many cus­tomers are fac­ing.

“Well, not too bad,” she said about sales. “I know that it doesn’t have any mon­ey around now, but it’s go­ing fair­ly al­right.”