Valentine's Day cheer for businesses

Valentine's Day cheer for businesses

Despite the economic downturn, business is picking up ahead of Valentine's Day

New Delhi: If you think the economic downturn means no special Valentine’s gift from your loved ones, you may be in for a pleasant surprise. For some businesses, Valentine’s Day is the single most important day for sales and the trends indicate that this year will be no different. Pawan Gadia, VP of Ferns and Petals says it hasn’t seen a downward trend in the shopping habits of Valentine’s Day customers compared with last year.

On average, February 13th, the most popular day for shopping, registers over 1000% increase in sales versus other days. Gadia expects the trend to continue this year. In addition, his customer base for Valentine’s Day has grown 20-25% year on year since the year 2000 and customers now have more platforms to place orders, like the website and over mobile phones.

Archies, the popular chain of gift shops says 16% of its annual turnover comes from Valentines Day sales. And it has been growing at 15-16% yearly for the last 6 to 7 years. It says the daily data received so far shows no change in buying patterns of customers compared with last year.

“Valentine’s Day is recession proof, as the data shows so far”, says Youhan Aria, Head of Corporate Communications for Archies.

QBA, a trendy restaurant in central Delhi, dines about 350 people a day - on Valentine’s Day, it is expecting to dine around 500 - the same as last year. It has however decided not to raise the price of its Valentine’s buffet, also keeping it the same as last year. “We’re not raising prices [of the Valentine’s Day buffet] keeping in mind the recession”, says Sunil Tickoo, General Manager of WG Hospitality which owns QBA. “A lot of people and corporates are not spending as much so we’re giving a much better spread this year for the same price

(as last year), ” he adds.

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