Booksellers see mixed sales as parents watch spending

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

With the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year just days away, par­ents and busi­ness­es on High Street, San Fer­nan­do, have mixed views on the back-to-school sea­son.

Some book­sellers are re­port­ing an uptick in sales, while oth­ers say busi­ness has been slow­er than usu­al, as par­ents try to man­age the cost of school sup­plies.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, some par­ents who were mak­ing some last-minute pur­chas­es said they had to shop care­ful­ly and find ways to cut costs.

Moth­er of two, Lisa Har­ri­dass, said she learned about the book grant late and faced dif­fi­cul­ties when she tried to ap­ply.

“I heard about it late, and when I went to ap­ply for it, the site crashed. Every time I tried to sign up, I not get­ting through, and I tried over and over and there was a dead­line and I did not get through,” she said.

Har­ri­dass, who has a child in sec­ondary school and an­oth­er in pri­ma­ry school, said she on­ly re­cent­ly got the mon­ey to buy her chil­dren’s sup­plies.

“I was try­ing to gath­er mon­ey.”

How­ev­er, she has al­so been buy­ing used text­books for years to save mon­ey.

“Every year since my son start sec­ondary school, I does buy used books. To me, it don’t re­al­ly make sense you pay­ing ... is the same work on the book so it don’t re­al­ly make sense you go to buy a new book and you can get it for half price or a low­er per­cent­age,” she said.

Wendy Allen, who was pur­chas­ing school uni­forms when we spoke to her, said she on­ly start­ed shop­ping this week af­ter an at­tempt to trans­fer her chil­dren to an­oth­er school was un­suc­cess­ful. Both her sons are en­ter­ing Form One.

“It’s been a has­sle, be­cause we were try­ing to get a trans­fer, did not get it, so here we are, last minute, try­ing to get the uni­form and every­thing else,” she said.

Mar­i­on Patrice, who jour­neyed from Point Fortin, said the prices for school sup­plies var­ied, but she found that some items were cost­ly.

“For a PE pants, I paid $150, so it is a lit­tle bit steep, and I am not re­al­ly work­ing.”

Patrice said she heard about the book grant late and did not think she would have enough time to sub­mit her doc­u­ments.

Mervyn Bais­den, who has been sell­ing used books for sev­er­al years, said busi­ness has been slow­er than ex­pect­ed.

He be­lieves one of the rea­sons could be the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI)-as­sist­ed dig­i­tal text­books.

“A lot slow­er, be­cause they in­tro­duced the AI, so we bought a lot of Form 2 books, and none of them sold as yet. So, more Form 1, Form 3, but we have a lot of Form 2s.”

De­spite this, Bais­den said he tries to work with par­ents who have lim­it­ed funds by help­ing them get all, or most, of the books they need.

But at Unique Book­store, man­ag­er Si­mone Ho­sein said busi­ness has been pick­ing up as the new aca­d­e­m­ic year ap­proach­es.

“It’s great. The sea­son has been shap­ing up good. It had a lit­tle slow pe­ri­od, but it has been build­ing mo­men­tum. We have great staff, great cus­tomers, and we ready for the sea­son.”

She said more par­ents are al­so turn­ing to used text­books to save mon­ey.

“Be­cause it’s more eco­nom­i­cal and you al­so save a lot be­cause a new book is like $300, when you can get a used book for like $200 or less, de­pend­ing on the con­di­tion,” said Ho­sein.

She added that sales have been build­ing for the last month, but last-minute shop­ping is a “tri­ni thing.”