Officials of Marble Slab Creamery, a chain of independently owned North American franchised stores that specialize in serving ice cream and other desserts are currently in Guyana winding up discussions with United Investments that are likely to result in the launch of a local franchise at its America Street outlet “possibly within a matter of weeks,” Marketing Manager Michael Alleyne has said.
United Investments is the parent company for the Footsteps Megastore at the corner of Camp and Regent streets, the Exclusive Styles boutique opposite as well as two other more modest Footsteps establishments at the corner of Camp and Charlotte streets and on America Street, across the way from Stabroek Market. The company is also currently engaged in talks with another North American food franchise as it seeks to add an even greater measure of variety to the services that it provides.
Alleyne agrees that United Investments’ Footsteps Megastore, topped by the popular Gravity Lounge has left a huge footprint on the commercial architecture of the capital.
He says too that by now the directorate of United Investments—Sabita Narine and her sons, Clairmonte and Dwayne Cummings—would have changed the minds of those skeptics who had wondered whether the local market could carry the burden of such an investment in the retail trade. These days, he says, the shopping facility having branded itself as much by its lavishness as by the quality of the goods that it provides, growth and diversification are very much on the minds of the company’s directors.
It took the Camp and Regent streets megastore a relatively short time to secure what appears to be a generous measure of consumer endorsement. Part of the reason for this reposes in the fact that shoppers can just as easily pick up a high-end garment in the store as a pair of inexpensive slippers. It is a matter of appealing to a broad customer base.
The popularity of the building housing the megastore has been enhanced by the creation of the Gravity Lounge on its premises. Almost overnight, it became a popular night club, hangout joint and restaurant. The company’s marketing strategy has created clever linkages between the Gravity Lounge and the rest of the store. Night time access to the Lounge is provided through an area of the building where items of clothing and footwear are strategically displayed. Alleyne says that the evening’s Gravity patrons often become the next day’s shoppers at the store.
A significantly expanded and increasingly mindful local market means that the product quality and customer service are high on the list of the megastore’s priorities. Accordingly, the company is painstaking in its purchasing, under constant pressure to please customers who naturally assume that quality would be second nature to such a well-appointed edifice.
All told the three establishments employ upwards of 190 staff, invariably people who must be trained, mostly in the ways of good customer service. As the business sector expands, Alleyne says that finding “good help” is one of the challenges confronting it. He endorses the view that training is one of the areas in which local business support organizations may wish to pay an interest.
Customer service and staffing challenges apart, Alleyne says United Investments faces both domestic and external challenges associated with importing goods into Guyana. He explains that these are challenges that face the business community as a whole and that they are mostly associated with the problems of small countries whose import volumes are modest compared with bigger countries and whose concerns often get pushed down the priority ladder.
Asked about possible company interest in offering greater volumes of locally manufactured goods – particularly footwear – in its outlets, Alleyne says the restraining factor has to do with a concern that smaller establishments might be threatened. He points out that visitors to the country may well relish the idea of buying a pair of local slippers “off the streets” so to speak.
Close as he is to the directorate of the establishment Alleyne believes expansion is almost certain to be accompanied by diversification hence the Marble Slab Creamery. A Chester Fries franchise is already installed on the ground floor of the megastore.
