Service, currency, quality and affordable prices are the ingredients which have kept one of Guyana’s oldest and largest businesses going 60 years after it came into existence, according to its Executive Chairman Sattaur Gafoor.
In a recent exclusive interview with the Sunday Stabroek, the man behind A Gafoor & Sons Ltd, which has several branches around the country, revealed the secret of the longevity and growth of his business. It started as a lumber sale business at the corner of Lombard and Sussex streets and 60 years down the line it can be described as one of the business empires in Guyana.
“Like in any business and in any aspect of life, there are always changes and therefore you always have to look at what is needed, so you can keep abreast of the changes and particularly to ensure that whatever you are involved in meets the customers’ requirement in terms of quality, in terms of price and above all we try to give what is most important, service,” Gafoor said during the interview.
Repeat business is the best way a company will be told that customers are satisfied with its service and, according to Gafoor, more importantly, when a customer recommends the business to another person. “That personal recommendation is worth ten advertisements either on television or in the newspaper,” he said.
But even with those qualities, the company may not have been as successful if it did not have a powerful human resource backing and when it recently celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, its employees were honoured. Gafoor was proud to say that of the around 900 employees there are some 91 who have between 10 to 51 years of service with the company.
He feels that it is testimony not only to the company’s business practices but also to the fact that its employees believe in the business. He said there is one woman who was with the company for 51 years, but was recently forced to come off the job because of illness. There are about 60 other employees who have been working with the company for over nine years.
“The policy of our company is that the greatest asset of this company is not its material assets but its human resources,” he said.
He said the training of employees is very important and he does some training almost every day, while there is a Toastmasters Club in which every person in sales spends about four to six months to ensure they are able to speak and communicate properly. There is also training in other job areas such as welding and refrigeration.
“We recognize that we are nobody without the employees; money is not my main objective…” he said.
Selling lumber
Mr Gafoor was just about 11 years old, 60 years ago when his father moved his family from Berbice to Georgetown and later rented a place at the corner of Lombard and Sussex streets, from where he began selling lumber. After some time the senior Gafoor started to import nails and barbed wire among other items, and at that time the business was called A Gafoors & Sons.
Even from then Gafoor showed an interest in the business of which he eventually took control; after school he would visit the business and assist his father. In 1966, the business was incorporated in a company, A Gafoors & Sons Ltd and in March, 1973 he took over the helm of the company following his father’s death.
Looking at him, one would not believe he is the owner of the Gafoor business empire, but Mr Gafoor will be the first to insist that he is “an ordinary person” who does not forget where he came from.
“I drive a car that is about ten years old, and if you see where I live it is nothing fancy but very ordinary,” he told the Sunday Stabroek with a small smile.
He noted that his religion, which is Islam, teaches that humility is the greatest asset and whatever is owned in the world is loaned as you take nothing when you die.
While he has brothers – two are now deceased – Gafoor said no other Gafoor is in the company, and it is perhaps the only family business where this is the case.
“We run the business in a corporate way, strictly on the basis of having a job for the person who is qualified for the job. No person gets a job because he is a relative,” he explained.
While all of brothers attended university, Gafoor never did. His three children – all sons – have also attended university, along with his wife who has a PhD in English. One son has a Masters in electronics while the others are doctors.
“So I am the only one in the house who is unqualified,” said the man who is the backbone behind the business empire.
Nevertheless, he calls his wife the backbone of the business and refers to her as the matriarch.
He recalls that they met during their school days at the Central High and have been married for 48 years.
“I used to bring first in the class from the bottom and she used to bring first from the top, so we were an odd pair,” he said bursting into laughter.
It was the remarks of then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham who had said in the early ’70s that he did not need shopkeepers, he needed people to go into industry, that saw the company take that path. Gafsons Industrial Complex started manufacturing louvre glass which was exported to Caricom countries, and later nails and other items were also manufactured. Today manufacturing accounts for 60 per cent of the company’s total annual turnover.
Other items are imported to supplement what is manufactured to ensure that there is an adequate supply for the building of a house or business; there are items for domestic, commercial and industrial building.
Branches of Gafoor can be found at Houston, Greater Georgetown, which is referred to as the flagship of the company; Land of Canaan on the East Bank Demerara which is the company’s manufacturing complex; Parika in Essequibo; and Rose Hall and Canje in Berbice. All the branches are headed by managers who are accountable for what transpires at their branch and who then report to the board.
Social services
The company does not shy away from its social obligations; it attempts to give back to society in several areas. Gafoor said recently the company trained two groups of persons who never had any real skills, in the use of the computer, and some of them were actually employed by the company while the others have gained employment elsewhere. There is also free training for persons in other areas and he said the company tends to take persons for training from the Albouystown and Alexander Village areas.
“[These are] people who really don’t have the opportunity – they may not have had a proper education – so we try to select from that area,” he said.
The company also builds houses for people and according to him six houses are built every year for persons who are destitute.
Every school day the company cooks 100 meals for children in the Albouystown area. Thirty-five meals are also cooked every day for women in the area.
Meanwhile, the Small Business Development Fund was started by Gafoors, which is to help poor people who have a business idea but no money with which to start up. The company started the fund by putting up $30 million, while former President Bharrat Jagdeo along with the British and Canadian High Commissioners also put in some money. It is now run as a separate entity “and has nothing to do with Gafoors Industries; it is not owned by Gafoors Industries it is just that we inaugurated it and now it runs on its own,” Gafoor said.
For the last financial year the fund reported that some 600 persons were assisted with loans to a total of about $150 million. Persons are given loans which they repay with interest, and Gafoor said there has been “little failure” in the repayment system.
