Roy Beepat and Monica Satrohan-Beepat belong to a younger generation of an older business class that has greased the wheels of commercial life in the city for several decades. Both have travelled, both are independent thinkers and both have separated themselves from thriving family establishments to shape their own business destinies. Giftland Office Max defines their vision and the Beepats believe that their own concept of retail trading marks more than a radical departure from the traditions of their respective families. “We believe that we are the local leaders in the contemporary trading trend,” Roy Beepat told Stabroek Business.
Roy Beepat has neither the demeanor nor the appearance of the President of one of Guyana’s most successful retail trading establishments. His outlook, he says, is shaped by an unerring focus on satisfying customer demand rather than on the uncertainties of an economic climate that has yielded peaks and troughs for the business community.
Except for the quiet authority that he exudes on the floor of the Water and Holmes streets establishment you could be persuaded that he is just another of the store’s 118 employees. Sporting jeans and shirtsleeves he frequently busies himself with the business of serving the store’s continually expanding clientele.
Giftland Office Max has combined the previously separate business pursuits of Roy and Monica. Her initial preference was for a small, “high-priced” Regent street store that offered mostly ladies’ accessories which, she admits, never really worked. Roy has undertaken a range of business ventures the best known of which was his successful Jeans Junction establishment during the 1970s. Office stationery is also one of the many pursuits into which he has ventured.
Giftland Office Max has “crept up” on urban shoppers gradually. The Beepats say they have worked hard to create a “feel good” environment- an atmosphere that panders to shoppers including an exchange or refund policy on goods that is not fashionable with its competitors. On weekends and, these days, increasingly on weekdays, the store’s music and DVD departments are crammed with people, browsing, making price enquiries or making purchases.
The store’s success, Beepat says, including ten successive years of “three figure” growth in sales turnover is due to the company’s unwavering focus on creating the conditions that maximize customer patronage and the role that its staff has played in helping Giftland achieve that goal. His own role, he says, has been to provide the conditions and create the environment that has enabled him to get the best out of the Giftland team.
Arguably the biggest difference between Giftland and its downtown competitors is embodied in Roy Beepat himself. He is, he says, his “own man” refusing to conform to the “accepted wisdoms” of the urban commercial embodied in organizations like the Private Sector Commission and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce. From Beepat’s perspective paying too much attention to “group think” can be counterproductive. “We focus more on our belief in our capacity to create an environment, whatever wider conditions may obtain, that allows us to increase our market share. That has been our focus and it accounts for why we have done well,” Beepat says.
Monica Satrohan-Beepat is Chairman of Giftland Office Max but has resisted being cast in the mould of the conventional businesswoman. She believes that both herself and her husband belong to a generation on innovators who seek not so much to impose their way of doing business on the rest of the commercial community but to cause their own success to set trends, to -as it were – help bring a tradition-bound retail trade culture into the twenty first century. She says that rather than embrace the social agenda of the prevailing urban commercial culture herself and her husband have preferred to create an optional culture, one that brings a greater dimension of humanitarianism to business while not losing sight of the goal of increasing market share.
During a decade in business Giftland has occupied five different premises. Each time that the company has relocated it has been for reasons of expansion. At the present Water and Holmes street location space has long caught up with them and even the company’s modest board room has become a repository for stock. Each relocation has also been attended by increases in its product range as well its volume of its goods. Its music and DVD departments never seem less than crowded while the popularity of its clothing departments appears to exceed that of its more established rivals in the city.
The company’s current low key 10th anniversary celebrations are taking place against the backdrop of plans to relocate again – within two years – and then to create a multi-million dollar, multi-purpose service facility which, Beepat says, will truly launch the local business sector into the 21st century. The plan, he says, will begin to unfold within the next two years. Meanwhile, Giftland wants to focus on the further consolidation of its customer appeal.
From its beginnings as “another Regent street store” in 1996 Giftland has grown steadily on urban consumers and far from modest about the company’s achievements Roy Beepat believes that the company may have already left its rivals behind. “We never worry about the competition. We are more preoccupied with doing what we do well and allowing the results of our efforts to make the point for us,” he says.
To make his point about the company’s success Beepat proffers statistics for growth in sales since 1996 that are scarcely believable. Each year since its launch a decade ago Giftland has increased its sales turnover by more than 100 per cent. Over the past two years sales have grown by more than 500 per cent.
The company president attributes Giftland’s phenomenal growth to an uncompromising insistence on high standards of customer service and the energies of what he believes is the most talented team in the business. “We have the highest entry level in the business, he quips. If the company has had it bouts of high staff turnover that is because, Beepat says, “our customer satisfaction outlook means that we will only retain staff with the highest possible commitment to customer service.”
Giftland’s Head of Marketing is a 26 year-old Mc Masters University Business Administration and Marketing Graduate named Ian Ramdeo who, Beepat says, has brought a strong work ethic and a “innovative marketing concepts” to Giftland since joining the company in December 2004. Ramdeo says that his approach to “selling” Giftland centres around customers rather than product promotion. “We believe that if we create the conditions that make coming to Giftland a pleasant and comfortable experience customer support will grow.” Beepat evidently believes that his youthful “marketing man” is “the real deal.” He has made him the company’s Chief Executive Officer.
Rodwell Ramsammy, the company’s Administrative Manager and head of its Information Technology department is credited with the creation of Giftland’s IT and Electronics Department. Ramsammy joined Giftland from Guyana Stores in April 2005 and, Beepat says, “exemplifies the important role the competent staff play in business growth.”
For all his inclination to share the credit for “the Giftland magic” with the people around him, however, it is the unmistakable presence of Roy Beepat that is clearly the engine that propels the company. He believes, he says, that contemporary marketing strategies ought to focus on “marketing service rather than products,” an outlook that accounts for his personal preoccupation with the performance of the 118 members of Team Giftland. “We never worry about sales. We concern ourselves more with providing the best service in the business. I set high standards and expect the staff to meet those standards. That is why we pay careful attention to our recruitment policy.”
Last year when customer complaints about the quality of some
of the movies being sold by Giftland’s music and DVD department appeared to threaten the Giftland image Beepat took an “exchange or refund” decision on 50,000 discs. “We made a mistake with the purchase of that particular batch of discs and we took a decision that our growing reputation for customer service should not be compromised by our mistake,” Beepat said.
Buoyed by the phenomenal success of what he calls “the Giftland concept” Roy Beepat now appears to have set his sights on a five-year plan to create a veritable Giftland empire. Over the next five years the company is seeking to invest several millions of dollars in the creation of a 5-storey commercial mall that will include a hotel and conference centre, restaurants and bars, banking services, beauty salons and a giant department store. Beepat believes that when the project is completed Giftland will compare favorable with facilities of its kind in North America and will be “untouchable” in the Caribbean.
The focus on keeping Giftland in the public eye has resulted in a sustained increase in the company’s marketing and advertising budget. Ramdeo says that the company spends around $1m a month in various forms of advertising and marketing including sponsorships and community initiatives. “Our marketing programme centres around the Giftland concept,” Ramdeo says.
The Beepats both appear to accept that the business climate in Guyana will continue to pose challenges in the foreseeable future. Having been victims of both fraud and robberies they are concerned about crime but not so concerned, Monica says, that they have not come around to accepting that their destiny lies with their business and with Guyana. “We’ve decided that whatever the challenges we’re not going anywhere,” Monica says.
