Everything to do with Pokémon, the book about Crown Princess Amalia, board games and lego. These are just a few sales toppers in the run-up to December 5 this year. Despite corona, Sinterklaas spends a lot of money, both online and in physical stores. Entrepreneurs are moderately satisfied.
The Libris bookstores saw their turnover increase by 20 percent in November compared to last year. “People have clearly started buying earlier, which has also been called for by the stores in various campaigns,” says Marcel de Groot, marketing manager at Libris.
“But we also see that daily turnover is extremely erratic. The weather has been bad in recent days, then you can see that immediately in the turnover. The internet benefits from that.”
‘Difficult to reprint’
Tension in bookstores is increasing, however. “If books are now sold out, it will be difficult to get a reprint before Christmas. This is due to the scarcity of paper,” says De Groot.
The umbrella organization of online stores, Thuiswinkel.org, also sees that consumers started their Sinterklaas shopping much earlier this year. “By mid-October, almost a third of the Dutch had already made Sinterklaas purchases,” says general manager Marlene ten Ham. “By mid-November this had increased to 45 percent. In 2020 it was 36 percent around that time.”
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