Uniforms business still in limbo

A slight pickup in sales but nothing to write home about is what two providers of industrial and school uniforms in downtown Kingston are reporting, despite the announcement by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information that schools should have reopened on Monday, January 3.

This has been particularly disheartening for the manager of EG Clothing Limited, Barrington Catnot, who operates from 192-1/2 Orange Street and still has a lot of uniforms stockpiled from when the COVID-19 pandemic first rocked the economy.

Uncertainty by parents as to whether school will fully open for face-to-face classes continues to hurt business, said Catnot, who sells wholesale khaki uniforms to clothing distributors and the industrial trade.

“A few people coming but some of them still waiting because them saying them not sure what is going to happen,” he told The Gleaner. “People who would order from me still say, ‘Me nuh sure, so me a buy one suit now and mek one fi me fi next week. Them not sure what them a go do’.”

The slump in business forced Catnot to cut back from 20 sewers down to eight, but since school reopened, he has recalled four of them in anticipation of business picking up, which he admits has gone up by 25 per cent but nothing compared to what he had anticipated. He showed us a storeroom stocked with khaki uniforms as well as industrial uniforms.

Over at the Uniform Centre at 4 Torrington Avenue, Manager Gregory Khan was reporting a serious devastation in business from which the company is yet to recover, and which saw him scaling down from about 20-odd workers to a mere two or three. As the pandemic took its toll on the tourism industry, they were forced to cut back since most of their clients were schools, hotels and the industrial trade.

“Those places got knock pretty hard and that was it essentially. So we scaled down to two or three persons working mainly from home. We just do a little cutting here,” he said, indicating the workshop.

There, Andrea Gilbert was showing a Wolmer’s High School for Girls uniform to a mother who had travelled from Portmore, St Catherine, to get the right fit. Just before that, she had fitted a student from that school and sold her a uniform.

“There is a little bit of pickup up but not like what it was before because people have been buying one uniform during the year and they are still very cautious about buying until they feel certain and comfortable that school is really back for sure,” Khan pointed out.

Meanwhile, Catnot, who has been doing business for more than 40 years, was really excited at seeing walk-in customers, even though they were few and far between. As The Gleaner toured his storeroom, he was cautiously optimistic that business will really pick up and was preparing for that eventuality.

“If business comes back, I wouldn’t be short because I stockpiled a lot. Last year I get lick but me still a make (uniforms) because me still have the hope that things will recover.”

Catnot has also added cloth masks to his inventory line.