Canadian border retailer Peace Arch Duty Free has reported a 15% rise in sales in the year to date, which it attributed primarily to its expansion into the luxury goods sector. Overall sales at Canada’s land border crossings are up by about 5%.

The store caters for a high number of Asian travellers. According to Peace Arch Duty Free president Peter Raju, spend per head is more than $75, the highest rate at a Canadian border crossing. He added that despite construction work, new legislation requiring travellers between the US and Canada to carry a passport and the rising value of the Canadian dollar, the 15% increase vindicates the retailer’s decision to focus on an upscale duty-free offer catering for all consumers.

Cartier and Omega have established shop-in-shop concepts at the location, and Gucci, Longines and Christian Dior watches are customising their boutique shop-in-shops. Raju said the Peace Arch Duty Free store is the first in North America to list the Bvlgari cosmetics line. The company has also added Dunhill leathergoods and plans to expand its men’s designer clothing range. It has already expanded its British Columbia wine and icewine collection and upgraded display fixtures in the liquor section.

Construction work at the border is nearing completion and Raju said he expects double-digit growth in 2010, with the addition of leading brands into the store and the Winter Olympics next year in Vancouver.

LUDHIANA: If ever, any more proof was needed to establish that the economic meltdown has not touched prosperous denizens of Ludhiana even a bit, a visit to this city of Mercs and mega-malls during the festival season would do. The items listed above are but a small sample of what residents of Ludhiana are picking up this Diwali as gifts for their near and dear ones, besides for the ‘influential’ who need pampering and cajoling through expensive gifts in the name of Diwali greetings.

It is again that time of the year when splurging is the norm and everyone wants to outdo others in giving other people lavish gifts.

Besides jewellery, costly electronic items, shawls and warm clothing, cars are now appearing on the wish-list of our die-hard shoppers for gifting this season.

Busy in handling crowds of shoppers, Sonam, a manager at Nilkamal Jewellers, manages to mutter, “What slowdown? I don’t see even 1% of its effect here. The other day, an ornately dressed customer walked in to place an order for 20 Rado watches, each costing over Rs 80,000.” Market sources reveal that expensive watches brands have always been a favourite when it comes to gifts for highly-placed government officials and business barons.

“People are spending as much as they can. A few days back, a woman walked in and picked up a Rs 5 lakh necklace for her daughter,” an employee at the jewellery shop revealed, without breaking her concentration while handling customers. A couple of diamond bangles, each costing Rs 1 lakh, is another favoured item for gifting this season. Orders for gold coins are also pouring into jewellery shops like never before and there is nothing to suggest that businesses have taken a beating due to slowdown here, as most of the orders are being placed by businessmen.

In a city where almost luxury automobile giants are setting up shop in times of slowdown, could cars stay out of the gift-list? RS Uppal, dealer of Radiant Toyota, comments, “If 3,600 cars are sold in the entire state in a month, 1,600 of them are bought in Ludhiana, but on Diwali, people prefer to gift small cars, particularly to their family members. Expensive clothing is a must-buy too.”

Sonu of Nilibar Bridal Wear swears by the trend and reveals that apart from the wedding season, this year, there has been a nearly 30% increase in sale of items meant for gifts. “Pashmina shawls are preferred by corporate houses as gifts for their contacts. Even intricately embroidered Phulkari is becoming a rage these days,” he revealed. The shawls carry a price tag that ranges from Rs 15,000 to Rs 30,000.

High-end cellphones, particularly the touch series and music editions, are a hit as gifts for business acquaintances and government officials, reveals a shop owner in Ghumar Mandi. “Anything priced over Rs 25,000 is picked up as gift by corporates and businessmen,” he revealed.

The profile for chocolates and candles as gifts is also undergoing a change, when it comes to their looks and price tags. Business-houses have placed bulk orders for Belgian and Swiss chocolates while spending anything between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000 on gift-packing alone.

Seema Vij, director of Cesta Chocolates, believes that the concept of gifting chocolates has picked up further this year. Reports of recovery of spurious ghee, khoya and stale sweets coming out months in advance are helping the trend further.

Candles shaped as aquariums and even chocolate-scented ones are drawing a good response, especially from the younger crowd, reveals a shop owner in Sarabha Nagar market.

Ritika Kapila, a dealer who markets hand-made candles, said she had been selling candles with themes ranging from Ganesha to love-birds, besides those that were chocolate-scented and sequined-decorated. “You could get candles for as cheap as Rs 100 to Rs 2,000 according to your budget,” she stated.

Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of India, would have wanted to share the 23,000 dollar special edition Montblanc fountain pen that has been named in his honour and is being offered around the world this year with the entire country, claims Lydia Powell, an Indian economics fellow with the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

“But today in India affluence is not negative, at all. Today India’s youth are more likely to look up to Bill Gates rather than Gandhi,” she added.

The Washington Post quoted Neeraj Singh, a Montblanc representative for India, as saying that many Indian clients had already preordered the pen.

“We had a pen on Alexander the Great. We had a pen on Winston Churchill,” he said.

“If you want to do something on an Indian personality, then nobody is greater than Mahatma,” he added.

Some Gandhi loyalists, however, said India’s founding father would have questioned why a public servant would spend 23,000 dollars on a pen in a country with a third of the world’s malnourished children.

“This pen is really funny. Gandhi would say it should be tossed in the trash or, better, sold off to pay for water and power for the poor,” said Amit Modi, secretary of Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram.

“Gandhi would have been ashamed,” he added.

“I consider the Montblanc pen their acknowledgment of the greatness of Gandhi. They are doing it the only way they know how,” said Gandhi’s great grandson Tushar Gandhi, adding: “His writing implement was his greatest tool.”

The Montblanc pen, unveiled for the celebration of what would have been Gandhi’s 140th birthday on Friday, has prompted howls from Hindu groups and Gandhists who say the sticker price is the lifetime income of many of India’s poor.

The limited-edition fountain pen in 18-carat solid gold is engraved with Gandhi’s image and tricked out with a saffron-colored mandarin garnet on the clip and a rhodium-plated nib.

The pen honors the independence leader, known as Bapu or father, who fought against unbridled materialism and even eschewed imported luxuries as harmful to India’s mostly agrarian economy.

Montblanc is issuing only 241 commemorative Gandhi pens, a number that highlights the amount of miles Gandhi walked in his famous 1930 “salt march” to the Arabian Sea, a successful act of civil disobedience against salt taxes levied by the British.

It was about time that Mike McCullough received an award.

Recognizing this, Warrant Officer Jeff Dickson and officer cadet Kevin Smith — members of the Canadian Forces’ 10th Field Regiment — presented the Saskatchewan Roughriders linebacker with a watch on Thursday.

“This is our Gladiator watch for Mike McCullough,” Dickson said as the Roughriders completed their workout on Taylor Field. “We thought he got ripped off.”

Each week on TSN, football analyst Glen Suitor presents a gleaming Movado watch to his Friday Night Gladiator. The most-recent selection was quarterback Buck Pierce, whose gutsy performance helped the B.C. Lions outlast the visiting Roughriders 19-16 one week ago.

“We don’t have a contract with Movado, so this is the best we could come up with,” Dickson said while displaying a weathered timepiece that is dubiously labelled a Rolex. “This one is from the Kandahar bazaar.”

Smith found the watch during a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He proudly notes that the stones on the watch’s face are “genuine zirconia.”

There is only one problem. The hands are deficient — might this award be more appropriate for a slumping receiver? — so the time is stuck at 4:55.

“Yes,” Dickson noted, “but the time is correct twice a day.”

The correct time to give McCullough the award was after practice. Once the formalities were over, the eighth-year Roughrider discussed the honour of receiving a watch that has a street value of at least $1 US.

“My Olex, minus the R?” he said with a chuckle. “It’s a nice acquisition, for sure. I’ll definitely pass it on to my kids, and hopefully they’ll pass it down to their kids.”

Failing that, there are some quality pawn shops on Dewdney Avenue, near the stadium.

“They’d probably lock the doors if they saw me carrying this thing over there,” McCullough said. “I don’t think many people in the world want this watch. But I’ll hold on to it as a keepsake.”

Smith, Dickson and McCullough were acquainted long before the ersatz Gladiator watch was presented. By sheer coincidence, Smith went to high school with McCullough’s father-in-law, Peter Langsford, in Kingston, Ont.

In recent years, the community-minded McCullough has gone out of his way to assist members of the Forces. Earlier this month, he ensured that the Roughriders’ players signed various forms of memorabilia, including pennants and flags, for Afghanistan-bound members of the Regina garrison.

“He took it over to the stadium in a bag and put (the memorabilia) in the locker room to get everyone to autograph it,” said an appreciative Dickson, who noted that members of the Forces are to visit the Roughriders’ dressing room after Saturday’s CFL home game against the Toronto Argonauts.

Such gestures are typical of the Roughriders, and of McCullough.

“When you talk about Mike, certainly you talk about character,” Roughriders head coach Ken Miller said.

“We were talking the other day in the locker room about players contributing to charities and non-profit things. He contributes to just about every one of those that come around here.”

The contributions carry on to the field, given McCullough’s excellence at middle linebacker since being promoted to front-line duty in mid-August.

“He is a strong character person and that really comes out in his play as well,” Miller said. “The last couple of years, he has been a special-teams player and a part-time linebacker, and this year the opportunity came for him to play. He has just taken this opportunity and run with it. He has done a fabulous job.”

That compliment applies to McCullough’s on- and off-field efforts, even though he is reluctant to accept any commendation. Instead, he lauds the soldiers for their exemplary efforts.

“I’ll do anything I can to help those guys,” he said.

“You see how young they are and what they’re going to do for our country, so it’s a big deal for us, too.”

Often times international divisions of watch makers outside of their home region are actually separate companies that are given permission to use the brand’s trademark. It can get confusing of course, but the concept is easy to understand when you realize that it is difficult to oversee operations and distribution of a brand worldwide. This was the case with luxury watch maker Corum. Who until recently relied upon the separate entity Corum USA, to handle its American market operations. This includes everything from sales, to support, and of course watch servicing.

In a bold move, Montres Corum Sàrl has acquired Corum USA LLC. The current owners of CORUM USA will likely remain in the watch distribution business, but Corum Europe will entirely oversee the American operation of the Corum brand. As such, Antonio Calce, the CEO of Corum will preside as the interim President of US operations until a final US President for the brand is appointed. The move will in no way disrupt the current distribution and sales of fine Corum timepieces in the US. The brand has recently revitalized their efforts and we should be seeing an increase in new products and hopefully brand presence in the US. The move by CORUM was meant to strengthen and improve its relationship with the US retailers who are key to the brand’s success.