Inflation, train project affect Eid shopping

LAHORE

Eid shopping has gained momentum just one week ahead of the religious festival with up to 50 percent to flat 50 percent sales promotions offered by various brands and mega stores in the City.

However, shopping trend remained thin in the middle income and lower middle income class markets owing to increasing food inflation and heavy utility bills which consumed major chunk of their income and nothing left for shopping.

Usually hustle bustle in the markets starts by mid of the Ramazan every year, but this year sluggish sale has witnessed in the markets.

Tahir, who owns a shop of gents clothing in Anarkali, said that business in the market had adversely affected with ongoing development project of orange metro line project.

He said people avoid coming to this side of the city while the increase in the rates of all type of clothes have also affected the sale.

Panorama centre, famous market for gents clothing, has also failed to attract the buyers this Eid. In the evening, Ali Zaib, a salesman of a shop commented that anyone can estimate the volume of the sales by just visiting the centre. A huge rush of visitors and buyers witnessed in the last 10 days of Ramazan a couple of years back.

This shows how much business is affected here, he said alleging the protests on Mall Road, protocol of MPAs during the Punjab Assembly session disturbed the traffic flow which discouraged people to visit here.

Hence, adversely affecting the businesses had been shifted to other markets, mainly Model Town link road, Karim Block Market, Iqbal Town.

In the evening to late night, great hustle and bustle is seen in Model Town link road and Karim Block markets.

Besides, Liberty, MM Alam Road, DHA Y Block and other posh area markets, business activities reach at peak in the evening.

A new trend of different type of sales trend has also been developed on special occasions, including Eid in the mega stores of the cities. However, even after sale, the prices of these products always remained out of the commoners reach.

Owner of a famous brand store have number of branches in different localities of the city said that sale was actually to attract the customers.

“We manage to make profit with the volume of sale instead of price of products and in such sales more items sold as compared to routine”, he said. Thus, the stores launch various promotional sales to play with human psyche.

Actually, the prices are so high that people wait for the sales for shopping, he said, adding that anyone can observe that during the last couple of years mega sales trend has increased.

These sales are also a source of clearing the old stocks which are backlog and unsold stocks as manufacturers had already made profits on those particular products, he said.