Retailer John Bull is reporting an ease in supply costs over the last year as the greenback, our currency's peg, strengthens ? providing a necessary relief in shaky economic times.

"Our costs have improved a little bit with the dollar holding its own the best it can," Rick Hazlewood, John Bull's corporate director, told Guardian Business. "But worldwide currency factors are something that sadly we have no control over."

His comments come as global experts predict the dollar's value will weaken as its reserve currency status erodes. It's a shift the upscale department store is not likely anticipating, given a feeble dollar value last summer contributed to John Bull shelling out more money to stock its European jewelry, watches and apparel.

The phenomenon may have everything to do with the limping U.S. economy and its effects on the U.S. dollar, which has lost considerable ground to the euro and other world currencies. That shared EU dollar, in fact, continues to climb in front of the greenback.

It's something Hazlewood is keeping an eye on.

"What it means is that in certain cases, you're going to have to spend more to import a product that's priced in a different currency, particularly a currency like the Swiss franc that particularly a year ago was a dollar to dollar to the U.S.," he said. "That makes it very difficult because then you have no margin to see any sort of profit."

The dollar value drop was felt throughout The Bahamas last year, which, of course, has its own currency fixed on par to the sinking U.S. one. For John Bull, and other local merchants with high-end Euro inventory, it meant reaching deeper into the pockets and pulling out about eight percent more cash than the year before.

It is to be noted that the price the store fetched for those goods did not change, however.

Still, John Bull faces challenges in its tourism dependent market given visitor declines to Nassau over the last year and the growing frugality of the American holidayers who are still coming.

The global downturn altering consumer taste for high-end items, played a large part in John Bull reporting the same 30 percent decline in sales of luxury handbags as its U.S. counterparts.

It's indicative, Hazlewood said earlier, of general declining sales at the chain of stores.

"Those figures are probably correct worldwide and they would be most certainly correct in this region and our island," he said. "It's a world-wide recession and we're not unique to it at all because everything is price sensitive.

"Everybody is working harder but that's just the business climate we're in. But you still have to produce yourself out of a crisis."

By INDERIA SAUNDERS ~ Guardian Business Reporter