With less than two weeks ahead of Eid-Ul-Azha, vendors are witnessing substantial sales of fridges and refrigerators, particularly the homemade ones.
The vendors said the sales already started getting momentum with only few days ahead of the festival when Muslims sacrifice a large number of animals.
While visiting different markets, including the Bangabandhu National Stadium Market, this correspondent found people from different sections of the society are making their choices at different shops and inquiring the offers by the companies, and trying to find out convenient ones within their budgets.
Intended buyers were looking for the locally manufactured refrigerators due to their lower prices than imported ones, standard quality and consistent with the budgets of the middle income groups.
Munni Akhter, a housewife, and her husband Najmul Alam Masum were looking for a refrigerator because her existing one is quite small in size.
“We have planned to celebrate the festival in Dhaka this year and we need to have a bigger refrigerator to keep the sacrificial meats,” she told the Dhaka Tribune on Wednesday. “We prefer homemade refrigerator since it is very cost effective and offers maximum after sales services.”
Alok Ghosh, manager at one of the showrooms at the market, said they have already started having good responses from the customers.
“In last two to three days, the sales increased significantly. We are selling around 50 pieces of refrigerators and fridges only from the four showrooms at this market. The overall response is also very positive across the country,” he said.
The manager said they are providing a minimum discount of Tk1,000 in every products marking the occasion.
“Customers prefer our products because we offer maximum warranty. We also offer replacement opportunity within six months of purchase,” the manager added.
While visiting other shops, it was found that the vendors of imported fridges were not in good mood because their season for maximum sales has not started yet. Anisur Rahman, branch manager at Samsung Plaza, said it will take few more days to have such crowd.
“We have not yet received good response from the clients. As you know, the political situation of the country is one of the main reasons of losses in the business,” he said. Samsung has brought products from two brands Electra and Samsung.
“If you buy an Electra product, you will enjoy 5% discount, but for the Samsung products, there is nothing special because we are already selling the products in cheaper rate than the other companies who import fridges,” he said.
Executives of other companies like Konka, MyOne, Marcel said they are offering scratch cards, gifts, cash discounts for the products, but customers have not yet bought a good lot of products.