The matriarch of the business, Lyla Kissoon, has credited the company’s human resources for its endurance, coupled with her fighting spirit. Being widowed in her thirties with five children, Kissoon was forced to battle on and keep the enterprise going. At one time the furniture store was known as the “giant” with its slogan, “We’re never knowingly undersold” and even though it is still around its owner said the business environment was no longer fair.
Approaching 82 she views the business landscape with sadness, because she said she sees some persons paying taxes while others don’t and the playing field is no longer level.
“Not only that,” she added, “most of the talented people have gone away.”
- Lyla Kissoon
During an interview with Sunday Stabroek at her Main Street home, Kissoon recalled that she was 18 years old when she started working in her father’s business – Sankar Brothers Ltd – where she remained for three years. During that time she married Alston Kissoon who was working with his uncle’s business, George Sookhoo’s Ltd.
“One day I came home and I saw him sitting on the steps looking very sad, and I asked him what’s wrong. He said, ‘I got thrown out by my uncle and aunt and I can’t go back,’ and I said to him, ‘Ah, don’t worry, if you can work for others then you can work for yourself,‘” she told this newspaper.
She approached her dad “who was very kind,” and the couple then began to search for a place to start a dry goods business. They first rented a small space in the Bernard & Company building at the corner of Camp and Robb Streets. That building later became theirs when the owner wanted to sell; they purchased it through the bank.
Their business was opened in December of 1951 and according to Mrs Kissoon they did very well, “because my husband knew about dry business and I didn’t know about dry business, but I didn’t take long to catch on.”
- Lyla Kissoon and her first husband Alston
Her husband travelled to purchase items for the store and it was during one of his trips he noticed mattresses and suggested on his return that they start making mattresses and furniture. She loved the idea, so initially they gave the jobs to “bottom house people” who made the furniture on order, but later they decided to open their own business.
They approached the then Premier of Guyana Dr Cheddi Jagan along with two other business owners to open factories at what is now known as the Ruimveldt Industrial Site, but in those days was canefields.
“He said to us, ‘Go ahead, I wish you all the luck, take the land, develop it build factories, find jobs for people and I would be happy,‘” Kissoon recounted.
The factory was built in 1960 and her husband invited persons from overseas to teach Guyanese how to make certain kinds of furniture; they have never looked back since.
“The Kissoons were the first to ever have hire purchase,” Lyla Kissoon explained, “and those days it was a dollar down and a dollar a week… would you believe it we never had any reason to repossess anybody‘s furniture because they always paid. But you know today is different.”
‘Unfortunate’
“Unfortunate,” is how Kissoon described her husband’s acceptance of an offer in 1966 to travel to India on a mission. She said her husband had hesitated about taking the trip but eventually decided to go.
“He went and the plane crashed on January 24, – Air India – and everybody died… he was forty-four,” she said.
“I was left with five children… and the reason why I did not go with my husband to India was because Christopher [one of their sons] was taking his Common Entrance in April and I said if I left he wouldn’t do his lessons…”
She described the days after her husband’s death as very trying, and for one week after his death she kept “waiting for him to come, and then I realized that I have children, they have to go to school, they have to live, I had to feed them.”
In the ensuing weeks she changed her religion to Catholic as her children attended Catholic schools, “and not a day would pass and a Sister or Father would not come and sit and talk with me.”
And in the end with grit she did not think she had at the time Kissoon said she took matters into her own hands and started visiting the factory and ensuring the business continued. She also travelled overseas and visited persons who were in the same business. She extended invitations to them and they would holiday in Guyana at her expense and teach her staff about the making of furniture.
“I have discovered in life for me that if I make a decision that I must do something, I must do it; if I only change my mind it goes wrong, and I think that is one of my chief successes in my life personally…” Kissooon said about her successful enterprise.
“Moving with the times” was also something that kept her ahead as, “you can’t remain stagnant in my business.
She said it was with this in mind she bought Takuba Lodge – which now houses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – and she had hoped to rent it out.
But the then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham “took it away from us.”
“We had Russians living at the top of the Takuba Lodge and he [Burnham] said that the Russians would shoot him and that was one of the reasons he took them.”
Kissoon had also built the Echilibar Villas in Campbellville which she had planned to rent, but these were also taken away by Burnham.
“He had the Carifesta people coming in and he went and looked at it and said ‘You know, I want to take these houses from you,’ and I asked him why he can’t just use them,” Kissoon said, but he later passed a compulsory acquisitions act.
She was paid $30,000 for the twelve villas and $1M for Takuba Lodge, which under the act was at 1936 prices, she said.
“But you know the 1936 prices was no price at all, and you look back at these things and say, you know one has to leave it all; you come empty handed and you leave the same way. Now where is Mr Burnham? He is gone; has he taken Takuba Lodge with him?”
Plantation Hope Estate was taken away from her mother also under the act, and according to Kissoon her mother was never the same way after because, “she pined away.”
“But that was life for us during the Burnham regime and very often the PPP say that I was very friendly with Burnham, but that is not true. Viola, his wife and I went to school together; her children and my children went to school together, so we were friends still you know, although he did all those things to me I am not a person to keep malice.”
When former President Desmond Hoyte took over following the death of Burnham Kissoon described him as being “different; he honoured me, he gave me the Arrow of Achievement and he made me advisor to him for the term he was there.“
The Kissoon matriarch said she had approached Presidents Cheddi Jagan and Bharrat Jagdeo in an effort to have Takuba Lodge returned to her, but they both refused.
Unfortunate events have followed Kissoon throughout her life, but she quickly pointed out that she has kept going. She recalled that the Park Hotel, which she owned, was destroyed by fire as well as their business at the corner of Robb and Camp Streets, where the Republic Bank is now situated. Luckily, she said, they had acquired the building opposite so they quickly began to operate from that location which they still do today.
Kissoon said her best business asset has “been the people who work for me,” while pointing out that you must take care of your employees and help them when they need help.
At one time they had branches in various places throughout Guyana, but today other than the Georgetown branches there are three other outlets in Berbice and they employ 208 persons.
One her sons opened a plywood business while another opened a canning business, but he was later forced to close.
Some years after her husband died Kissoon married Hemraj Kissoon with whom she had a daughter.
She described her six children as “being well educated and can take care of themselves.” She has 14 grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.
In her younger days she hunted, fished and danced in her spare time, but because of failing health she now “listens to beautiful music and I admire dancers.”
She was also a great entertainer and the huge dining table in her Main Street home that she has lived in for the last 51 years tells the story.
She still has a desk at home from which she works, even though she has been very unwell. If she does no work on any one day she would tell herself at the end of it that she had wasted the day.
“I must tell you too that all the people that I have known in my lifetime have either died or gone away. The only two people that are friends with me are Magda Pollard and Carmen Jarvis; those are my only two friends that went to school with me,” she said with a small smile.
