An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Phar­ma­cy and con­ve­nience chain Su­per­Pharm has made a strate­gic en­try in­to the St. Au­gus­tine land­scape, open­ing the doors of its tenth lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day to its new cus­tomers.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Su­per­Pharm’s busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er, Jean-Luc Mout­tet said the phar­ma­cy chain choos­es lo­ca­tions with­in prime lo­ca­tions across the na­tion.

“If you look at a map of Trinidad to­day, you will no­tice that we are lo­cat­ed in ten hubs across the coun­try. So much so, we of­ten say that wher­ev­er you go, there is al­ways a Su­per­Pharm - or two - on the way there! St Au­gus­tine eas­i­ly fits this re­quire­ment. A bustling town of ma­jor cor­po­rate and small busi­ness­es, med­ical in­sti­tu­tions, every type of res­i­dence, schools and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies with whom we seek to part­ner in the fu­ture. This was in our sights for quite a long time...and we have fi­nal­ly land­ed,” Mout­tet said.

The newest Su­per­Pharm is lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of Austin St and the East­ern Main Road in St Au­gus­tine, across the road from the St. Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal. It has 26 park­ing spots.

Asked about Su­per­Pharm’s ex­pec­ta­tion of per­for­mance at this new lo­ca­tion, Mout­tet said look­ing at the cal­iber of busi­ness­es in this area it is a worth­while in­vest­ment.

Mout­tet not­ed that the fran­chise al­ways want­ed a store in St Au­gus­tine but was wait­ing on the best lo­ca­tion pos­si­ble.

“We have tai­lored our hours of op­er­a­tion, open­ing ear­li­er at 7 am to cater for the St Au­gus­tine cus­tomer: hot pies and cof­fee for peo­ple on ear­ly com­mute to work, on-the-go meals for stu­dents study­ing late, busy cus­tomers who need to pick up health and con­ve­nience items quick­ly...the list is end­less. All our tar­get de­mo­graph­ics re­side right here. “We are al­ready pur­su­ing strong re­la­tion­ships with the in­sti­tu­tions in the area to give back as well.” he ex­plained.

In terms of con­struc­tion, the St. Au­gus­tine branch took five months to build. Asked how much the land and build­ing cost, Mout­tet said he pre­ferred not to dis­close the fig­ure for com­pet­i­tive rea­sons, but stat­ed it was a sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment.

Crime

As it per­tains to the crime sit­u­a­tion that is plagu­ing the coun­try, Mout­tet in­di­cat­ed dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ous with its se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice provider to en­sure height­ened pres­ence and strength­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at all stores in­clud­ing a rapid re­sponse armed se­cu­ri­ty team.

“CCTV cam­eras are in­stalled at all stores na­tion­wide to en­sure cen­tral mon­i­tor­ing and in-store; car park ar­eas are al­ways prop­er­ly lit; we al­so pro­vide a shut­tle for staff. Se­cu­ri­ty re­mains a pri­or­i­ty to en­sure the safe­ty of staff and cus­tomers as far as we pos­si­bly can.

“Fur­ther, Su­per­Pharm has al­ways main­tained a great re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice ser­vice and there are pa­trols around our stores at all hours. This may be one of the rea­sons the cap­ture of crim­i­nals in re­cent times oc­curred so swift­ly,” Mout­tet high­light­ed.

Ex­pan­sion

Ques­tioned on what oth­er lo­ca­tions the phar­ma­cy chain is ex­pect­ed to open up at, Mout­tet said while he could not in­di­cate where to next, he said find­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to bring health and con­ve­nience to its con­sumers is in Su­per­Pharm’s DNA and man­age­ment is al­ways look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand.

Growth

Al­so giv­ing in­sight in­to the ex­pan­sion of Su­per­pharm was its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Glenn Ma­haraj, who said the es­tab­lish­ment be­gan in 2005 at West­moor­ings and it now has ten lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing St. Au­gus­tine.

“We have opened ten Su­per­Pharm and two Presto stores with­in 18 years. We are one of the lead­ing phar­ma­cy and con­ve­nience chains in Trinidad hav­ing reimag­ined ‘con­ve­nience.’

“Our prod­uct mix is al­ways evolv­ing to in­clude unique and trend­ing items so that cus­tomers are al­ways com­ing in to find out what new, ex­clu­sive items are on the shelf, some of which they would have seen on so­cial me­dia. This has en­sured con­tin­u­ous growth in our stores,” Ma­haraj re­vealed.

Asked how the US-style phar­ma­cy per­formed rev­enue-wise in 2023 amid the var­i­ous chal­lenges, the CEO said it has seen sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in prices from both its lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers dur­ing and post-COVID-19 pe­ri­od.

“This is con­sis­tent with glob­al trends. We al­ways seek mea­sures to en­sure that costs are not ful­ly passed on to our cus­tomers. And to re­main the in­dus­try leader, you must in­no­vate to keep adding val­ue that in­cen­tivis­es re­turn cus­tomers. We con­tin­ue to do ro­bust sea­son­al and val­ue cam­paigns that gen­er­ate in­ter­est and strong sales.”

Cost of items

The costs of many items in Su­per­Pharm tend to be high­er than oth­er phar­ma­cies. In ex­plain­ing this, Ma­haraj said the es­tab­lish­ment’s prices re­main very com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket.

“Added to our Se­niors’ Tues­day ten-per-cent-off pro­gramme, they are one of the best prices in the mar­ket. And again, we con­tin­ue to ex­plore ways of adding val­ue to our cus­tomers via dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives.

“Cur­rent­ly, we have part­nered with Med­ical As­so­ciates, a well-recog­nised health in­sti­tu­tion, to of­fer doc­tor con­sul­ta­tions for just $100 at our Diego Mar­tin, Val­sayn, and Gulf View stores. We al­so of­fer one of the most af­ford­able prices for the im­por­tant shin­gles vac­cine at $1,100 - in­clu­sive of the doc­tor’s cost to ad­min­is­ter. This has tak­en ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to crit­i­cal health­care to a whole new lev­el. Par­ents are bring­ing in their chil­dren, el­der­ly peo­ple are com­ing in for vis­its that could have been pro­hib­i­tive be­fore,” he dis­closed.

Fur­ther­more, the CEO said sur­veys al­ways re­veal that its cus­tomers’ loy­al­ty is based, not just on the ex­pert care, but the au­then­tic­i­ty of prod­ucts.

“Fake drugs would nev­er be an is­sue for us. Every sin­gle phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal is rig­or­ous­ly checked and au­then­ti­cat­ed be­fore reach­ing our shelves to en­sure they do what they should. As I said, when you get some­thing at a Su­per­Pharm, you should know and trust that it is of the high­est qual­i­ty. We op­er­ate at the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and are recog­nised for that, on which we will nev­er com­pro­mise,” Ma­haraj re­marked.

Labour short­age

He said while the labour short­age in the re­tail in­dus­try is al­ways a chal­lenge, Ma­haraj not­ed that the phar­ma­cy chain makes it a pri­or­i­ty to in­vest in its peo­ple and in their ca­reer ad­vance­ment.

“The man­ag­er at our new St Au­gus­tine store has been with us for some 15 years. We have al­so bro­kered a long-stand­ing fruit­ful re­la­tion­ship with the UWI Phar­ma­cy School and grad­u­ates are ea­ger to join the Su­per­Pharm chain. So many have stayed on with us for over 15 years! Mem­bers of our cus­tomer ser­vice teams too, have some­times served with us since we start­ed. Su­per­Pharm has a his­to­ry of of­fer­ing growth op­por­tu­ni­ties - you can be a cashier to­day and grow to be­come store man­ag­er,which is at­trac­tive to many when seek­ing em­ploy­ment,” the CEO added.

Agos­ti­ni Group, which is a com­pa­ny that is list­ed on the lo­cal stock mar­ket, ful­ly ac­quired Su­per­Pharm from pri­vate own­ers in 2010.