PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Uni­com­er, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Courts, has con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket de­spite the re­cent de­par­ture of one of its longest-stand­ing com­peti­tors, Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors.

At the rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny for the soon-to-be-opened new Courts Mega­s­tore in El So­cor­ro yes­ter­day, vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor for Uni­com­er Caribbean Fe­lix Siman III ex­plained that the $180 mil­lion in­vest­ment in the lo­ca­tion was just phase one of the group’s plan for the space.

“Our lat­est in­vest­ment here in the Mega­s­tore and in the Mega Plaza is of al­most $180 mil­lion in this Courts Mega­s­tore project and it re­in­forces our con­fi­dence in this mar­ket and our be­lief in the po­ten­tial of the peo­ple we serve. And we’re not done yet.

“This com­ple­tion of the store is phase one and we’re proud to an­nounce that we have a sec­ond phase and it’s a two-part project you will see the con­struc­tion of our Courts Mega Plaza,’ said Siman III in the cer­e­mo­ny, ad­dress­ing busi­ness stake­hold­ers pri­or to the rib­bon cut­ting.

He ex­plained that the Mega Plaza is set to fea­ture sev­er­al oth­er re­tail busi­ness spaces at the lo­ca­tion.

At yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ny, it was con­firmed that a Star­bucks branch is set to be opened at the new Mega­s­tore as part of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pres­tige Hold­ings.

How­ev­er, the sale of Stan­dards was de­scribed as “sad” by Guiller­mo Siman, vice chair­man and ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent for Uni­com­er, who ex­plained that an of­fer was even made to the group to buy the brand.

“It’s sad in the sense that it’s a com­pa­ny that has been in Trinidad for a very long time. Be­lieve it or not, con­trary to what some peo­ple think, we be­lieve the com­pe­ti­tion is very healthy be­cause, at the end, we need to be the best for our cus­tomers. And if the cus­tomer thinks that some­body else is bet­ter than we are, then we need to do some­thing to im­prove. So it’s re­al­ly sad to see a busi­ness like that close at some point in time, they asked us if we were in­ter­est­ed. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, their lo­ca­tions were sim­i­lar to where we are,” he said.

Fe­lix Siman al­so ex­plained that the clo­sure was con­cern­ing, as there were some chal­lenges in the lo­cal mar­ket, but he was con­fi­dent T&T had a bright fu­ture.

“It’s nev­er wel­com­ing to see oth­er re­tail­ers close stores. We would like to en­cour­age and as­sure that the Trinidad mar­ket con­tin­ues to grow for every­one. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we’ve been con­cerned about some of the cur­rent con­di­tions in Trinidad, but we tru­ly be­lieve in the fu­ture of the Trinidad mar­ket.

“We’ve been here in the past, we are here to­day, and we’ll be here in the fu­ture. So we re­al­ly in­vest, not for to­day. We in­vest for the fu­ture,” said Siman III, who said the com­pa­ny had used its in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions to nav­i­gate some of the chal­lenges posed.

“The cur­rent forex is­sue is ob­vi­ous­ly a great chal­lenge to many com­pa­nies in Trinidad. We’re for­tu­nate that we’re a large con­glom­er­ate. We’re a big group, so we lever­age our ca­pac­i­ty as a multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion to re­al­ly try to still bring in the best prod­ucts from over­seas. We’ve al­so tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to part­ner with lo­cal ven­dors and re­al­ly ex­pand the lo­cal of­fer­ing. And I think that’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty as well for Trinida­di­ans to buy some lo­cal prod­ucts,” said Siman III.

Guiller­mo Siman al­so ex­plained that for­eign ex­change chal­lenges were not in­her­ent to T&T as the com­pa­ny was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar is­sues in Guyana and Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries.

The new Mega­s­tore, which was con­ceived as far back as 2009 af­ter a fire de­stroyed much of the orig­i­nal Mega­s­tore in Ju­ly 2008, is be­ing hailed at 46,000 square feet as the largest re­tail space op­er­at­ed by Uni­com­er.

The Uni­com­er team said the forex chal­lenges did not im­pact the two-year con­struc­tion of the new store, as it large­ly utilised lo­cal ma­te­ri­als and con­trac­tors.