On June 30, the Massy Group pub­licly shared its new cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty, in­clud­ing the ex­pla­na­tion for the change which re­sult­ed in Hi-Lo Food Stores be­ing re­brand­ed as Massy Stores. The su­per­store cel­e­brat­ed this mile­stone on Ju­ly 23 by host­ing stake­hold­ers with an event held at The Ban­quet & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Fi­es­ta Plaza, Movi­eTowne.

Fea­tured speak­ers for the evening in­clud­ed Ger­vase Warn­er, Pres­i­dent and Group CEO, Massy Group; Thomas Pan­tin, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, re­tail line of busi­ness, Massy Group; and Derek Win­ford, CEO, Massy Stores, Trinidad. Earl Boodas­ingh, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, Massy Group, con­clud­ed the evening with a heart­felt vote of thanks.

In his re­marks, Win­ford stat­ed the change was need­ed to en­sure cus­tomers make the con­nec­tion be­tween all the brands.

"We are not chang­ing the val­ues that Hi-Lo of­fers to cus­tomers. In­stead it be­comes eas­i­er for a cus­tomer to make the con­nec­tion be­tween, for ex­am­ple, the Massy Stores Su­per­mar­ket and Massy Stores Phar­ma­cy. This con­nec­tion be­comes one that cus­tomers feel com­fort­able with and can trust to pro­vide their needs," Win­ford said.

Ger­vase Warn­er added to this train of thought by ex­pand­ing on the val­ue of the Massy Card, the group's loy­al­ty card, which now al­lows all cus­tomers to eas­i­ly ac­cess the wider range of prod­ucts and ser­vices of­fered by the Massy Group.

"We re­brand­ed and ex­pand­ed the Smart Shop­per Card to be­come the Massy Card. This per­son­alised loy­al­ty card, with your name em­bossed on it, al­lows you to shop at any Massy con­sumer-fac­ing com­pa­ny and earn points. For ex­am­ple, you can now earn huge points by buy­ing a ve­hi­cle with Massy Mo­tors and use those points to re­deem as cash off from your Massy Stores pur­chas­es. The name change comes with new and en­hanced ben­e­fits for our cus­tomers," Warn­er said.

The new Massy Stores iden­ti­ty was part of the group-wide strate­gic plan to cre­ate a new op­er­at­ing struc­ture to cap­ture syn­er­gies and op­ti­mise growth across the Neal & Massy busi­ness­es. The strat­e­gy called for sub­sidiaries, such as Massy Stores, to be­come more in­ter­de­pen­dent, pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with im­proved op­tions, bet­ter ser­vice and greater cost ef­fi­cien­cies.

Cel­e­brat­ing an­oth­er mile­stone this year, Massy Stores which was opened in 1950 by Gor­don Graves New on Ma­rine Square us­ing the name Hi-Lo Food Stores, turns 64 years old. On April 17, 1975, Hi-Lo Food Stores be­came part of the Neal & Massy Group of Com­pa­nies, and to­day the chain boasts 17 lo­ca­tions na­tion­wide with over 1,800 em­ploy­ees. Massy Stores re­mains one of the best-per­form­ing mem­bers of the Massy Group, with a new store that is sched­uled for open­ing lat­er this year in the Trinci­ty area.

"These are ex­cit­ing times for not on­ly Massy Stores and our lo­cal cus­tomers but al­so those across the Caribbean. We have em­barked on a num­ber of projects in­clud­ing the mod­erni­sa­tion of our stores and the con­struc­tion of new stores to fa­cil­i­tate the de­mand for con­ve­nience and high lev­els of cus­tomer care.

"In ad­di­tion to open­ing the Trinic­i­ty store lat­er this year, we will al­so open a new su­per­mar­ket and two new su­per­centres in Bar­ba­dos. In Guyana, we plan to open a su­per­mar­ket as well as a su­per­centre. All sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments in­deed, as we con­tin­ue to add val­ue for our cus­tomers through our five dis­tinct propo­si­tions: Massy Su­per­centre, Massy Su­per­mar­ket, Massy Ex­press, Massy Phar­ma­cy, and Massy Home," Pan­tin said.