Businessman Gassan Azan
Barbara Ellington, Senior Gleaner Writer
THE NAME Gassan Azan has become synonymous with bargain shopping outlets Bashco and MegaMart. That is not surprising. In fact, one could say it's in his blood.
His great-grandfather, parents, uncles, cousins and countless other relatives bearing the Azan name have established a family culture of trading and running businesses successfully all over the island. Gassan has followed in their footsteps.
This is a far cry from someone who wanted to become either a lawyer or an accountant. Now he perseveres and cherishes the dream to take his chain of wholesale/retail stores islandwide and the MegaMart super stores on a regionwide expansion. Like most Jamaicans, this affable businessman with a gigantic funny bone hopes that Jamaica will return to the peace-loving society of his parents' day.
Mr. Azan shares his story of passion for a challenge, plans for the future and wish for Jamaica in an interview with The Gleaner.
BE: How did it all begin?
GA: Actually, out of necessity. In 1977, I had returned home from university in Boston where I'd had more fun than work - without a degree because I wanted to work, and gone to my father for a job. He turned me down, saying he couldn't hire me because I was not qualified, so I had to find something to do.
I borrowed $30,000 from my mother and went to be a route distributor for Carreras. But luck was on my side, there was an increase in price of the cigarettes right after I bought them and I made a profit of $12,000, so I paid back my mother and began my trading business. I bought goods from higglers and sold them back to store owners, including my father.
Through travels overseas, business grew and I convinced my brother - a construction engineer - to join me. I soon noticed that most of the items I traded were made in China, so I went to the country and developed relationships with suppliers and that was how Bashco (formerly Costco) started in 1990.
From day one, my objective was to control the wholesale/retail market in the lines we carry.
TARGET MARKET
BE: Describe the process of getting the two chains, Bashco and MegaMart, started and tell us who is your target market?
GA: Over the years, I noticed that when higglers came into Kingston to sell food, they bought dry goods to return to their communities for resale, thus compounding their money. After I started Bashco on Orange Street, I later expanded to Beckford and Princess streets. We decided to facilitate our customers in the other parts of the island and that is how the branches came about.
We now have locations in Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, May Pen, Mandeville, Spanish Town and Savanna-la-Mar. Next month, we will open one more in Linstead. Our target market continues to be vendors, wholesale and retail distributors and householders who need good quality goods at affordable prices.
The business climate downtown was good in the early 1990s when we started; the market had been liberalised and we caught the upswing and prices were right so we capitalised quickly and grew. We lost the Savanna-la-Mar store to looting and riots a few years ago but we rebuilt and even opened a second one there.
BE: What is the business climate like in downtown Kingston now?
GA: When we started, more people from uptown felt safer coming downtown, but with the constant flare-ups of violence over time, we have lost that market. That's a pity because several other stores were opened after they caught on to the idea of doing similar business.
The idea for MegaMart in Portmore, St. Catherine, came out of a trip to Hellshire with my business partner one Sunday. I saw the vacant lot advertised and envisioned a one-stop shop similar to the ones overseas. After doing some studies of the entire community, we bought the land and put up the building.
It has been a great learning curve. We try to give preference to locally produced goods so all our chicken and most agricultural items are locally grown. Whatever is available locally at the quality level we desire, that takes priority on our shelves, but we don't limit consumer to local goods.
Disposables and paper products are among the fastest-moving items.
BE: Are you happy doing business downtown in the present climate of violence and extortion?
GA: We were part of what caused the business redevelopment of downtown; when we started, we tiled stores, painted them in bright colours, got a vibe going and people began to spend money on their businesses. What now exists as derelict buildings for the most part belong to title owners who cannot be found. The authorities need to bring pressure on them, take them over or flatten them in order to get rid of crack houses and criminals or nothing will change.
BE: What for you are the biggest hurdles to doing business in Jamaica?
GA: The experience of all the importation procedures is trying; although we understand it, the government agencies make things very counterproductive and if we didn't have this reputation in the rest of the world, we would be much better off.
BE: So why bother?
GA: I don't know anything else, plus, how would I feed my family?
BE: We hear all this talk about fixing downtown, there are as many plans as for that as there are for fixing the police force, if you were given the task, how would you do it and where would you start?
GA: I would stop talking and then start with the market district because you cannot have a thriving business district that people feel they cannot go to after dark. It would have to also get some round-the-clock activities to attract folks in. Then the stores and buildings have to be fixed up and those owners of abandoned buildings have to be found so a decision can be taken about those properties. But enough talking and planning have been done. And if it's not addressed, more people will close up shop and move out.
BE: What is the future for Bashco and MegaMart, do you see more locations?
GA: We see ourselves covering every major town centre in the island with a Bashco store and I think Jamaica needs about five MegaMart stores in all to cover the consumers' needs. Montego Bay is coming on stream in December this year. It will be in Catherine Hall and we are in the drawing phase. After a while, the setting up of branches becomes easier.
The plan is to make MegaMart regional in the long term and this will give Jamaican manufacturers a big boost because we support them. Unfortunately for us, Trinidad has done a better job of marketing themselves than us. Prices are a major issue: Many local manufacturers can't compete but the number of products made in Trinidad now on our shelves is substantial.
BE: How many persons do you employ? At a recent Christmas function, your staff seemed very happy with their jobs. What is the relationship like and how do you find good quality staff and do you have to train them rigorously?
GA: It is a rigorous and ongoing programme and I have always maintained an open-door policy where any member of staff can see me at any time. Our staff is what makes us tick. We operate almost like a member of Parliament, involved in all aspects of their lives, weddings, funerals, birthdays - everything.
We have to be that way because these are the people performing for us daily, they represent us. We get back calls from customers who are satisfied. So training is ongoing. They must have my attitude or it reflects badly on me.
BE: Would you consider yourself a hands-on type of boss and how do you divide time among your stores?
GA: Too much so. I don't get out to stores as much as I'd like because I am still an integral part of the buying team. But I have a good management team and it's a part of our culture, they are growing with us. I still go to Hong Kong and the rest of the world for two major trips annually but I work with the team and we share information on what we think will work.
BE: How do you manage to stay ahead of the game with foreign exchange as expensive as it is?
GA: Last year, we suffered when the dollar was climbing but when there is a mild movement you can cope, especially with stores turning over cash daily. You are insulated against that, you don't have goods on credit, most of it is in stock or sold. If it got out of hand, we could stop trading. We have a mature foreign exchange system; now there are fewer risks than a few years ago.
BE: What is your biggest business headache now?
GA: It is continuing to find good staff at higher levels to fuel our expansion plans. At MegaMart, we are running up to 14 different businesses under one roof so our managers need to understand the systems that go into that. And we don't believe in hiring foreigners, we'd rather use local people. Equal to that it's getting the banks to be more understanding with private sector borrowers.
BE: But we hear of so many jobless university graduates, what are you looking for in your young managers. Does it have anything to do with the attitude they have towards the kind of remuneration they expect?
GA: We have a human resources department but I don't see them. But many of them do believe that because they have a degree, they are worth millions of dollars. And you find that with the free movement of qualified labour under the CSME, many from Trinidad are coming in and accepting less than what Jamaicans will work for.
This is part of the problem, and in a way you cannot blame our people because cost of living is not cheap in Jamaica.
BE: What gives you greatest pleasure in business?
GA: That comes from the challenges and the bigger the business, the bigger the challenge for me. It gives me an adrenaline rush to manage it properly.
BE: What is your typical day like?
GA: I am up from 4:30 a.m.; I work for an hour, go to the gym, work some more, before going downtown to my office. I think it's important to maintain my office there. After lunch, I work until it's time to go home. Some days I go to Portmore or to the uptown store to check on things. I don't do it often enough but at least once a week, I try to visit rural locations.
