BY FIONA MOTSA
MBABANE – Demand is strong, it is not the best year we have ever seen, but there are a lot of people out looking for Christmas trees,” said Mayibongwe Khumalo one of the senior attendants at Pep stores in Mbabane.
Khumalo said in the last three years, the demand for Christmas trees had dropped due to COVID-19 but since the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted the demand has grown.
“I think people want to bring back the Christmas cheer back and therefore are buying the Christmas trees like crazy. We have been running out of trees and restocking in the past three weeks,” he said.
Store manager at an Indian décor shop located at Mbabane Plaza said this was the first time they run out of trees, first time in years.
“The number of trees we sell annually goes up every year. I mean even this year; we are going to sell a few more trees than we did last year,” said Mallah Heidrich and predicts they will sell out of their supply of trees within the next 5-7 days.
Other retailers say Christmas shoppers are out in force with many opting to get their festivities sorted unusually early.
At the New Mall, it is all glitter and Christmassy as tinsel dripped from shop fronts, children queued for a picture with Santa, pop-carols played and shoppers were there in the thousands.
An employee at one of the shops said the store had been frantic and was already down to its last items including running out of plastic Christmas trees. She further said it was families and companies buying the trees which were usually in bulk.
“Inventory supply issues are something I think the industry is going to face for a while. There are just not enough trees being grown for the demand,” said the employee.
Although high demand usually means a price increase, some of the retailers said they have not had to raise their prices much.
“I can tell you our biggest number one selling tree, an 8-foot plastic Fraser fir and it goes for E350 We did everything we could to try and keep the prices down, but like everything in the world, it is gone up a little bit, but it is not as extravagant as some of the things we have heard,” explained the retailer stationed at Corporate place.
A random shopper found inside Shoprite looking for a plastic Christmas tree said people needed to be realistic and practical when buying a Christmas tree. “Just be a little more open-minded about the size you are looking for because there are some restrictions. Certain sizes are not available. So, just be a lot more open-minded when you come out on the size you are looking for, there are some shortages on sizes, but there is a tree for everybody.” She said.
