The face of Sheriff Street has been changing continually over the past two decades or so. Once considered a residential area, the street that runs continuously across almost the entire width of the capital has been undergoing a fast transformation. Night Clubs, restaurants, hardware and furniture stores and, over the past few years, at least three supermarkets have sprung up on Sheriff street between Duncan and David streets. The change has given one of the main access roads to the East Coast Demerara and Berbice a kind of downtown feel. At night, it is a hive of activity with patrons of the various business houses competing for car parking on a street that was simply never meant to be part of the city’s commercial hub.
The congestion eases once you pass David Street. Now you are heading north towards the sea wall and Sheriff Street returns somewhat to its old self. There is an almost continuous row of dwelling houses extending all the way the East Coast Highway. There is one other noticeable break in the row of houses, a modern glassy looking shopping complex housing the Premier Group of Companies. It is by far the most attractive of the new complexes that have appeared on Sheriff Street in recent years.
The Premier Group comprises three entities—Rouge Beauty, Electronics City and International Foods. They are three separate operations supervised by a single directorate, but, it seems, run on a day-to-day basis by separate management teams.
Premier’s key local players are Shiraz Mohammed, the Group Marketing Manager and Shazam Jamuludin, the Company Accountant. Both, however, appear to defer the Pioneer’s US-based Director, Preta Mangar.
Premier is a major investment, seemingly hundreds of millions of dollars though, unsurprisingly, the company’s key men in Guyana are not inclined to discuss the size of the investment with Stabroek Business. What they are keen to discuss is Pioneer’s first anniversary celebrations. The company was launched in November last year and since then its marketing budget has exceeded one million dollars a month.
In sum, the Premier Group is the latest investor initiative to establish an up-market shopping emporium in Georgetown; but just an attractive building but a place where you can buy high-end goods, whether it be cosmetics and ladies handbags, brand name toys and electronic gadgetry or imported foods and condiments. “What we are aiming for is to ensure that we can supply whatever our customers need. We want to reduce the extent to which people have to look overseas to get what they want,” Shiraz Mohammed says.
Inside Rouge Beauty there is evidence of exclusivity, particularly in the range of brand-name handbags and colognes on offer. There is the same focus on popular brands at Electronics City. International Foods offers imported foods almost exclusively and those, it appears, are catching on with the local wealthy and with expatriates living and working in Guyana.
The Pioneer Group has not been slow to respond to the demands of the Guyana market. With their eye on last Friday’s launch of GT&T’s new Blackberry service, Electronics City has imported 50 of the Curve model of the Blackberry handset. Forty-two were sold on the day of the GT&T launch!
Both the Group’s Marketing Manager and its Accountant say that they are modestly satisfied with what they have accomplished during the first year. People, they say, are attracted not only to the quality of the goods they provide but also to the convenience of their location, ‘far from the madding crowd’. There is ample room for parking and late openings mean that people can shop after hours.
As yet there is no talk of expansion, only consolidation and of finding ways of selling the Pioneer Group to the wider Guyanese public. Inside Rouge Beauty, Shiraz makes an elaborate gesture with his hand, first towards the brand name ladies’ handbags and eventually in the direction of the high-end colognes. “Much of what you see here isn’t exactly cheap. We want to raise standards. We want to provide quality for people who can afford it.”
This Christmas, the Pioneer Group is going all out to attract attention to itself. Earlier this week there was evidence of the presence of a consignment of new toys. The promotional gestures will include giveaways to needy children during an elaborate Christmas party that will be held in the spacious forecourt of the complex. That apart, Jamaludin says, the group will be donating 1 per cent of its toys’ sales to several charities. “It’s our way of giving back to the community,” he says.
