Raphael John-Lall

Su­per­Pharm, the US-style phar­ma­cy chain, con­tin­ues to grow de­spite slow growth in the rest of the re­tail sec­tor, says its chief ex­ec­u­tive David So­bri­an. Su­per­Pharm at­trib­ut­es this to the chain-which sells phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as well as gro­cery items-be­ing rel­a­tive­ly new to the in­dus­try in T&T. "When I talk to my col­leagues who work in re­tail, it was a tough year in T&T. A num­ber of col­leagues in the re­tail in­dus­try and al­so those in the su­per­mar­ket in­dus­try say that De­cem­ber was flat and sales were not that good. I had sales growth of 14 per cent with the six stores at the end of 2010. That's good. A cou­ple of my stores are still new so they are still grow­ing. I have stores like Price Plaza in Ch­agua­nas grow­ing at 22 per cent. Gulf View is grow­ing over 20 per cent. We opened it in 2007. How­ev­er they are new busi­ness­es but not ma­ture."

Agos­ti­ni Group

Last year, fol­low­ing a re­verse take-over, Smith Robert­son and Co and Su­per­Pharm be­came part of the Agos­ti­ni's Group, which is a com­pa­ny that is list­ed on the lo­cal stock mar­ket. Agos­ti­ni's is­sued 50.4 per cent of its share cap­i­tal to Vic­tor E Mout­tet Ltd, which now con­trols Agos­ti­ni's, Su­per­Pharm and Smith Robert­son. So­bri­an be­lieves that this ac­qui­si­tion was good for the com­pa­ny and, al­though the struc­ture of Su­per­Pharm has not changed much, be­ing part of a large group brings its ad­van­tages. So­bri­an was one of the orig­i­nal share­hold­ers from the in­cep­tion six years ago along with Joseph Ra­hael, John Aboud, Pe­ter George. "You could say that of­fi­cial­ly that deal (when Su­per­Pharm be­came part of the Agos­ti­ni's group) went through in Ju­ly and re­al­ly there hasn't been any op­er­a­tional change in the way Su­per­Pharm op­er­ates. So there has been no change in terms of how we op­er­ate or to the cus­tomers.

"I'm very hap­py with the change, I think its good for us. Agos­ti­ni's Ltd is a sub­stan­tial group of com­pa­nies and it gives us more clout be­ing part of a big­ger group in terms of ne­go­ti­a­tions whether it is for fi­nances or what­ev­er. As a mat­ter of fact, one of the ben­e­fits is ac­cess to in­vest­ment cap­i­tal. We have the re­sources to fu­el the ex­pan­sion pro­gramme." In 2005, when Su­per­Pharm opened its first branch, the vi­sion was to bring a first-world ser­vice to T&T, he said."We came to the mar­ket in 2005. We opened our first branch in West­moor­ings in 2005. Since the ac­qui­si­tion, we have con­tin­ued to im­prove be­cause the busi­ness is grow­ing. The scale of this op­er­a­tion is not like a one-lo­ca­tion store. "We have been grow­ing the busi­ness for the past five years. We opened two stores in 2006, one in 2007 and one in 2008. We now have six stores. They were opened in this or­der: West­moor­ings; Val­sayn; Price Plaza Ch­agua­nas; Main Road, Tu­na­puna; Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval and Gulf View, La Ro­maine. Five of them have dri­ve thru win­dows with the ex­cep­tion of Tu­na­puna."

The Su­per­Pharm Ex­pe­ri­ence

So­bri­an said one of Su­per­Pharm's strengths is that, apart from phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, there is a wide range of oth­er items on the shelf. He said over half of its sales are in health­care-med­i­cine be­ing the biggest chunk-while the rest is con­ve­nience-type items. "In Su­per­Pharm you can come in­to one store, fill a pre­scrip­tion, buy bread and buy a gift for a fam­i­ly mem­ber. In oth­er words do a cou­ple things in one stop. Peo­ple are opt­ing to take their lim­it­ed time and go to an en­vi­ron­ment where they are com­fort­able. My cus­tomer re­search shows that the lo­ca­tions are great, the hours are con­ve­nient and they like the va­ri­ety.

When we came to the mar­ket there were more than 250 phar­ma­cies so we had to have a busi­ness to would at­tract cus­tomers." Many items found in Su­per­Pharm's stores are not found in oth­er phar­ma­cies.

"There were a num­ber of cat­e­gories not rep­re­sent­ed in phar­ma­cies like cos­met­ics, mag­a­zines, school and of­fice sup­plies, pet sup­plies, gro­ceries. We sell a fair amount of con­ve­nience gro­ceries like break­fast ce­re­als, teas, cof­fee juices and snack and bev­er­ages." An­oth­er nov­el con­cept they in­tro­duced was the dri­ve-thru win­dow, he said.

"When we opened we first in­tro­duced dri­ve-thru win­dows and 24-hour ser­vice. When we in­tro­duced that, it was un­heard of in this coun­try. This was ex­pen­sive. Oth­er phar­ma­cies asked how we could do that, hav­ing a phar­ma­cist sit­ting there all night."

Costs

The costs of many items in Su­per­Pharm tend to be high­er than oth­er phar­ma­cies. In ex­plain­ing the costs of items in Su­per­Pharm com­pared to oth­er phar­ma­cies, he said they pro­vide su­pe­ri­or ser­vice and qual­i­ty prod­ucts and some of their items may be more ex­pen­sive. "The re­al­i­ty is that there is an ad­di­tion­al cost to pro­vid­ing each of our at­trib­ut­es. Our con­ve­nient lo­ca­tions mean high­er priced re­al es­tate. Our pay­roll costs are high­er due to the longer open­ing hours. Most of my staff are fe­male and we pro­vide trans­porta­tion to go home af­ter work­ing a night shift."

Labour Short­age

De­spite these suc­cess­es, he ad­mit­ted that a "se­vere short­age" of labour is hin­der­ing the per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny. Su­per­Pharm em­ploys 300 peo­ple and he es­ti­mates that it needs 10 to 15 per cent more staff to op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly. "Be­fore Christ­mas, I had to close a cou­ple of my dri­ve thru's, the 24-hour part, be­cause I don't have enough pro­fes­sion­al staff. I have a se­vere short­age of labour at the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el of phar­ma­cists and on the shop floor. We don't have enough labour to meet the needs of the busi­ness. We put out va­can­cy ads, we are in­ter­view­ing and we could nev­er get enough staff."

He point­ed out that there are well qual­i­fied phar­ma­cists in the coun­try, but he is not sure where they go when they grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). "The Er­ic William's Med­ical Sci­ences com­plex has a four-year Bach­e­lor of Phar­ma­cy (B Pharm) pro­gramme putting out qual­i­fied phar­ma­cists but I have not been able to get enough." He said that the work in Su­per­Pharm is "hard." "You have pre­scrip­tions com­ing all the time. "We pay good wages-way above the min­i­mum wage." So se­vere is the chain's staff short­age that they have had to re­duce the num­ber of stores opened for 24-hour. "Ini­tial­ly, I had four opened 24 hours and I had to scale it back to two and now there are none. I had to do this be­cause of a short­age of labour and lack of phar­ma­cists."

He used the ex­am­ple of the Su­per­Pharm store to be opened this month as an ex­am­ple of the short­age.

"We have a new store to open on Feb­ru­ary 12 at One Wood­brook Place. That store was ready to open be­fore Christ­mas and the on­ly rea­son I couldn't open that store was we didn't have enough phar­ma­cists. "I am on­ly able to open be­cause I had trainee phar­ma­cists; what I call pre-reg­is­tered phar­ma­cists. I have had them on staff for the last six or sev­en months but, by law, they are not li­censed to run a shift by them­selves, I al­ways had them work­ing un­der su­per­vi­sion. By Feb­ru­ary they will be avail­able. "Lat­er this year, out of the grad­u­at­ing class, I'm go­ing to be bring­ing six or sev­en more."

He is not sure why there is a short­age.

"I don't know if there is an is­sue of phar­ma­cists mi­grat­ing. When you speak to the school they have 50 to 60 grad­u­ates a year. Where are they go­ing? It's a chal­lenge." He be­lieves his staff short­age is worse than the rest of the in­dus­try. "It's more se­vere for me than the rest of the in­dus­try be­cause I have six lo­ca­tions. Plus look at my hours, Sun­days, pub­lic hol­i­days and late at night. I'm the largest pri­vate em­ploy­er of phar­ma­cists in the coun­try. We have around 25 phar­ma­cists aboard. In a busy store we would have two phar­ma­cists on du­ty. Once the phar­ma­cy is opened we have a qual­i­fied phar­ma­cist on du­ty. We don't mess with that."

2011

The first store to be opened in 2011 is One Wood­brook Place.

"Our ven­ture in­to One Wood­brook place is sort of an ex­per­i­ment. It's a small­er store. The de­vel­op­ment it­self is an ex­per­i­ment for T&T. It's a mixed de­vel­op­ment .You are mix­ing com­mer­cial with res­i­den­tial. So we have tak­en a risk to in­vest in it." He said a store is un­der con­struc­tion in Trinci­ty and will be opened be­fore Christ­mas. "Once we get ap­proval then we'll go ahead with a store in Mara­bel­la." For So­bri­an the sky is the lim­it. "To ful­fil our vi­sion, we need to grow. I don't know where we might end up, it might be more than 10 stores. It could be 12 or 15. I'm not sure. As long there are neigh­bour­hoods with a sat­is­fac­to­ry de­mo­graph­ic to jus­ti­fy a store we will try to go there."