- Thread starter Bob Boyd
- Start date
Super Pola in Sosua, closing?
Many businesses in Sosua are closed.
I've ben there four times recently Dec and Jan.
Everything used to be open packed with people even Dec 24th and Jan 1st..... years ago.
Now may businesses are permanently closed, on Sunday there were very few people on the streets during the afternoon.
Playero still is doing good business with good product selection, specialty items which Jumbo does not have.
Few good restaurants remain.
Dolci y Sapori with Claudio and his wife have consistent quality and good service.
Haven't been to S. Pola.
The reality is profit margins need to be made by a big store.
With declining residents and visitors in Sosua it is hard for businesses to generate sufficient margins to be profitable and carry operating costs.
Hopefully S. Pola will remain.
Good management would keep customers informed, we are expanding for your convenience .....to keep them coming.
If closing maybe not.
It's the DR and Sosua, one must make allowances.
I've ben there four times recently Dec and Jan.
Everything used to be open packed with people even Dec 24th and Jan 1st..... years ago.
Now may businesses are permanently closed, on Sunday there were very few people on the streets during the afternoon.
Playero still is doing good business with good product selection, specialty items which Jumbo does not have.
Few good restaurants remain.
Dolci y Sapori with Claudio and his wife have consistent quality and good service.
Haven't been to S. Pola.
The reality is profit margins need to be made by a big store.
With declining residents and visitors in Sosua it is hard for businesses to generate sufficient margins to be profitable and carry operating costs.
Hopefully S. Pola will remain.
Good management would keep customers informed, we are expanding for your convenience .....to keep them coming.
If closing maybe not.
It's the DR and Sosua, one must make allowances.
Declining really!! Demographics changing but not declining..
I don't know what you all are talking about - Super Pola is jam packed. If things are not full on shelves it's because people are buying so much. Couldn't even get in before Christmas or New Year's Eve.
It isn't going out of business - that is for sure
It isn't going out of business - that is for sure
Totally agree, don't know what XQT is talking about. One of my wife's friends who is a realtor (not one of the new ones, but one who has been around for years) said that this year EVERYTHING was packed, no villas no apartments available to rent from mid December until this past weekend. And yes in Super Pola, both bad management and that people are just buying like crazy. Poor management because if you notice week after week after week after week that the supplies doesn't last, you should order more. As I've said in other posts, I rather go to Puerto Plata to do my shopping bigger, which means less crowded and also more supplies. I hope it changes, but being that it's been like this since the pandemic, I have low hopes. Closing? Definitely not..
Residents in Sosua are not declining, it's just the opposite. More people than ever moving here from other countries mainly the USA. Tourism seems to be going down, but that's not the target market anymore.
Super Pola has a construction site behind the deli part of the building. If the Ramos brothers had the Sosua store on the short list for closing why would they be adding onto the building?
The situation in Sosua is the total opposite. The last couple of years have seen the biggest real estate booms since 2006. More and more people are deciding to move here on a permanent basis, especially those that can run a business online from anywhere in the world. All the private schools are full and this is a mix of Dominican and ex pat kids. Supermarkets are flourishing and are generally always relatively busy. The Superpola in Sosua has had a distinct reduction in variety over the last few years and they spread the same merchandise over the shelves to try and make it look full. Why this is I really don't know but those that live here know that the variety that they offer now is nothing like when they first opened. In general, the restaurants and bars did quite well over the year last year and right now most of the main restaurants are doing very well. On Friday I was at Parada el Choco, it was almost full. On Saturday night I was at Margots and people were being turned away as it was so busy and on Sunday I had lunch at Dolce e Sapori and it was full. I have lived here for 21 years now and there are more and more ex pats moving here full time. I work at the largest gated community on the north coast with over 450 villas and there are more and more full time owners here and the same can be said for most major residential communities. Business is good on the north coast and may it stay like that for many years to come.
The issue is more widespread with the Sirena stores, regardless of the chain. Not just the one in Sosúa.
There really are only two signs of what this could be. Either they are running into trouble on a management level or it's a strategy to sell more as people tend to buy certain things if they think it's reaching the last ones and it might not be there when they return to the store.
I doubt it's the first one, but you never know. Grupo Ramos is headed by an economist, so they might not be throwing darts at a board and hope they stick. In fact, a business doesn't get as big as they are simply by chance.
There really are only two signs of what this could be. Either they are running into trouble on a management level or it's a strategy to sell more as people tend to buy certain things if they think it's reaching the last ones and it might not be there when they return to the store.
I doubt it's the first one, but you never know. Grupo Ramos is headed by an economist, so they might not be throwing darts at a board and hope they stick. In fact, a business doesn't get as big as they are simply by chance.
Sirena has been consolidating its retailing division nationwide into two main brands over the last 5 years:
- Sirena (and its child brands Sirena Market and the ecommerce app and delivery Sirena Go)
- Aprezio (focused solely for low income neighborhoods in big urban areas of DR).
A third one (Multiplaza, which was the initial concept for the Multicentros) works building/property management malls in the East region of DR.
They started phasing out the "Super Pola" brand in 2019 starting with Super Pola Sarasota in Santo Domingo and spreading nationwide with the latest change on Super Pola Las Terrenas in the North Coast last year. So far the last store with the Pola brand in the country is in Sosúa.
No news or confirmation of a change in the short term for Super Pola Sosúa but soon Grupo Ramos will do something about it and it will be unnoticed (like the way they do business).
Heck! Even with the change of name at the Bartolomé Colón branch in Santiago, we Santiagueros still mention that one the "Super Pola".
cc @NALs @Manuel01 @Bob Boyd
I agree it is generally packed WITH PEOPLE but not the shelves, that's for sure. What I don't understand is that you would assume they are using the same inventory control / replenishment systems that are in all Sirena owned stores. But Super Pola is constantly out of many, many products for an extremely long time. Not so much at La Sirena in Puerto Plata. Replenishment times at Super Pola are so bad that they spread existing product out to make the shelves look full. At Super Pola if you see something you really need/crave better buy as much as you can, as you may be waiting for a long, long time once the product is sold out - like FOREVER.
Super Pola is at the end of the supply line so, whatever is left, that's what they get. Same with Janet's in Cabarete. They are frequently out of items for a long time. I asked the owner about it and he said he orders them but, if they don't bring them, there's not much he can do. Also, a lot of colmados are buying in bulk from the supermarkets and that wipes them out.
You will notice that in Sirena, Sirena Market stores all over the country they will have many items that look as if the shelf is full, but it's simply a single line with nothing else behind them. This is seen even in the Sirena in Puerto Plata.
I started my career very many years ago in retail, climbing to management level after 6 months... If you're running low on an item, to make the shelf look pretty, this is a normal practice. As far as I know, the point is not to make the shelf look full to make customers confused, but to simply make the shelf look pretty and not empty. I'm not commenting on whether a supermarket is getting what they order or not, but just on pulling the available product to the front...
And yes, I have seen this many times in all the supermarkets I've been to in the DR (La Sirena, Jumbo, Jose Luis etc.), but this is no DR specific practice when running low on something...
That may be true of Janet's suppliers but Sirena supplies stores all over the island - East, West and North Coast. I don't believe Sosua is any further than many other Sirena-owned stores in their distribution system.
You and I realize what is happening. Fewer and fewer tourists, more expats...
I don't expect Super Pola will be closing.
The insane traffic tells it all. It's not the tourists renting all these new cars.