Raphael John-Lall

De­spite fac­ing one of the most dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times the re­tail sec­tor, Massy Stores re­mains con­fi­dent in the fu­ture of the coun­try’s econ­o­my, says Derek Win­ford, CEO, Massy Stores.

“This is one of the most dif­fi­cult times in re­tail, as a mat­ter of fact in the whole coun­try, I have been in re­tail for over 25 years and I am telling you that the times that we are see­ing to­day is the tough­est times that we have seen. Even go­ing back to the fi­nan­cial cri­sis in the Unit­ed States, we are in re­al­ly tough fi­nan­cial times,” he said.

Win­ford spoke yes­ter­day at the open­ing of its 19th store in T&T in Man­dalay, Tumpuna Road, Ari­ma, near the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um.

He called the newest store, which oc­cu­pies 19,000 square feet, a “huge in­vest­ment” but de­clined to give the fig­ure of how much it cost to build and to out­fit the store.

“We have con­fi­dence in the fu­ture of T&T. We have con­fi­dence in Ari­ma. We have con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my. Here we are mak­ing such a huge in­vest­ment when things are as bad as they could ever be.”

He al­so dis­missed as “fake news” re­ports that Massy Stores had the high­est prices in the su­per­mar­ket in­dus­try.

“We have a Dol­lar Stretch­er and on that, you will find the low­est prices pos­si­ble. We have deals that you will not see any part of the world. It is called ‘ex­treme deals.’ When peo­ple tell you the com­pe­ti­tion is cheap­er, it is fake news. Massy Stores is about the first or sec­ond cheap­est su­per­mar­ket in T&T. That is the truth. Any­thing that any­body tells you about high prices, be­cause of the state of the econ­o­my, be­cause of the per­cep­tion that we have, it is fake news.”

He added that they are bring­ing the best in ser­vice to this lat­est branch.

“It is the first time, that we have been able to bring all this, our lat­est for­mats to Ari­ma. We have de­liv­ered in Trinci­ty, we have de­liv­ered it in Mara­bel­la, we have de­liv­ered it in Gulf, we have de­liv­ered it in St Ann’s, we have de­liv­ered it in Glen­coe but it is the first time we are bring­ing it to Ari­ma. It is the third store in Ari­ma. A beau­ti­ful am­bi­ence, wide aisles, clean­li­ness, qual­i­ty, ex­cel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice. When we put on a scale this is two kilo­grammes or 5.5 pounds, that is ex­act­ly what the scale said. Our val­ue deals with hon­esty and in­tegri­ty.”

He al­so said that Massy Stores will con­tin­ue its Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty projects like re­cy­cling.

“The plas­tic bag ini­tia­tive that we have, a lot of our cus­tomers got up­set with us for charg­ing 50 cents for a bag. 50 cents is a penal­ty, I do not want any­body to pay 50 cents for a bag. So use the reusable bag and save the en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.