Kerala - Alappuzha   

Second edition of shopping fete to begin on December 1

ALAPPUZHA: The second edition of the Grand Kerala Shopping Festival will begin on December 1 and continue till January 15, 2009, District Collector V.K. Balakrishnan announced here on Friday.

Addressing a press conference, Mr. Balakrishnan said the festival would have three categories of participants—gold, silver and general. The categorisation was on the basis of the registration fee and the number of free gift coupons each of these categories would be given.

The participants would comprise retail/wholesale outlets, consumer durable stores, lifestyle outlets, jewellery stalls, textile dealers, hotels and restaurants, resorts, spas, Ayurveda resorts, automobile traders and so on.

The gold category would have a registration fee of Rs.25,000 and 350 free coupons while the silver partner, as the participant would be called, would have a registration fee of Rs.5,000 and 50 free coupons.

The general category would have to pay Rs.1,000 for registration. The district’s target for gold partners was 10, but already 12 groups had registered themselves.

The target for silver partners was 125, out of which 109 had registered so far. There was no specific target for the general category. Twelve had registered till Friday and several hundreds more were expected, the Collector said.

A speciality of the festival this year would be the Coir Fest that would be conducted along with the main festival. While K.S. Manoj, MP, would inaugurate the festival at the East Venice Motors, Paravur on December 1, the Coir Fest would be launched from Cherthala the same day.

“All arrangements are in place for the event, which is aimed at making the most of the season, which is not just a festival season but the tourist season in Alappuzha as well. There were several minor drawbacks for the inaugural edition, which have been sorted out this year and we are expecting a hike in the transactions as well this year. Last year, transactions worth Rs.160 crore were reported. The target this year is Rs.180 to Rs.200 crore,” Mr. Balakrishnan said.

The festival would have six weekly lucky draws for customers with the total quantity of gold to be given away as prizes during these draws to be 40 kilograms, he added. Details were available on the website www.grandkerala

shoppingfestival.com.

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