Sep 13, 2010

Jamaican stores and the concept of a sale...an #FNOJA post

Wah mek none of these Jamaican stores don't know the concept of a sale? Wah mek? or as JPS would say, how come? Fashion's Night Out Jamaica has come and gone and people were pretty split down the middle of yay or nay. But lets face it, who has money to spend on fashion mid September? Really, who? I'll tell you who. The people who can go to Heart and Sole, charge two pairs of shoes to the credit card and then go to Spanish Court Hotel and lament over their purchase while sipping $1000 glasses of wine going "a girl can never have too many pairs" and I ain't mad. You worked for it, good for you! Or maybe your daddy did, whichever. I'm tryna be where you at. But come on... That's the minority.


Those are the people who mostly benefited from FNOja. I can't step foot inside of Heart and Sole, a $15g shoe is simply out of my budget. That's my reality. There are lots of managers and other paid people who went, business execs, sales persons, doctors, lawyers and such as who got dolled up and enjoyed themselves. Persons in my social circle maybe scored a 30% off dress that's been hanging around in a store for 5 months. Maybe. The average sale was about 20% Jamaica has a consumption tax of 17.5% so I am not impressed. Vogue says the point of FNO isn't about sales tho, they are trying to get people to buy at full price to inject life into the economy. That wouldn't fly in Jamaica where people are broke. Its the sales that drew the masses but from the tweets I saw, most were left hanging, feeling like a suck out bag juice.

It isn't rare for me to go to a store 3 months later and see a dress I already tried on. Are you comfortable having it hanging around like that? It doesn't make sense to cut the price and get it out the store so you can have space for more? Did you all go to business school? Something is very wrong with this business model. Or is it that the deep sales are only thru word of mouth for the select few? I saw one tweet saying the stores where hiding the good stuff.

I heard a supermarket got in on the fun. A supermarket discounting everything in the store? Now THATS what I'm talking bout! You know when I was in NY, I went to the supermarket and picked up some stuff that rung up to about $83 at the register, but by the time my Aunt applied her coupons and store card the bill fell to about $51. Thats AMAZING. The Jamaican equivalent is about $4g and change. Do you know what I would get if I took 4g to the supermarket here? Sh*ts and giggles. Why can't we have those kinda coupons and sales here on the regular? And I had already gotten a lot of bang for my buck cus I picked up things that were on sale at the time, maybe they were gonna expire in a week, maybe they were two for one, maybe it was just its week to be on sale.

I see some supermarkets employing a little of that here. I've been able to buy 2 for 1 cereals, buy 3 get one free on mixed veg in a can and other bundled or married items. I can only hope we are slowly moving towards proper sales. Cus the "sale out, sale out" signs and advertisements that some of y'all have are a crying shame.

What did y'all score? Were you apart of the yay or nay? Did you go at all?

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