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One Mart is back!
Traffic was heavy in and out at One Mart as persons were eager to cash in on some of the amazing prices that Proprietor and Minister for Communications and Works Mark Vanterpool said would remain as it was what the new One Mart was all about.
“Today One Mart’s new model is very low prices, lower than any store and we are competing with the St. Thomas market. Our objective is to make sure that the money in the BVI does not continue to flow into St. Thomas so we have brought our prices right down. For example we had a 1000 cases of Capri Sun juices sold out at $9.99 a case, 1000 cases of Aloha water at $5.99 a case but it’s almost all gone. We are also working on getting some furniture here by the 15th of the Month, a little late because our shippers were a little behind in getting the furniture to us and also appliances.”
Hon. Vanterpool said he was overwhelmed by the amount of persons that have visited the store and have expressed their delight at the re-launch.
“We had hundreds and hundreds of them here just waiting to see us reopen. Even before that they bought out almost the whole store already. In two days time I would say we sold about eight containers already of products and we have five more coming on Monday. On Thursday another set is coming so next weekend we will be back up on track fully loaded again.”
According to Hon. Vanterpool, the store opened its doors in Road Town in November 1986 and operated in 600sq ft of space but today is now occupying some 30, 000 sq ft. “We were aiming to meet our anniversary which is November but we cut it a little close. We wanted it to be earlier in November but it didn’t happen. That was our plan, to catch the Christmas season and our anniversary and give the customers good bargains for that time.”
Noting that the store took “quite a dip” in recent times, Hon. Vanterpool said a review of the operations was done and it was concluded that the entity was operating at two high an overhead and the prices were too high.
“So we took a little time, we reduced the overheads, we reduced the space we are using, we reorganised the bottom floor, we looked at our staffing and reorganised it and we looked at our electrical costs. Those were a few big costs. Having done all of that we can now put our prices very low. The customers love it, they have expressed their happiness that we are back in terms of how they would like to see One Mart. They consider the store their store as they say this is our store and we are glad that they have owned it and we want to make sure that they are happy.”
The proprietor also had special thanks for all the faithful customers of the store. “We want to thank all our customers who have been here with us in thick and in thin, ups and downs, they have been here and today was a good manifestation of that.”
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