Barbara Ellington, Senior Gleaner Writer
Andrew Reid of Pepsi Jamaica relaxes with the trademark product at his office on 214 Spanish Town Road, St. Andrew, last Thursday. - Andrew Smith/Photography Editor
BORN AND raised in the Red Hills Road area of St. Andrew, Pepsi Jamaica's General Manager Andrew Reid describes himself as a product of the system, having journeyed from the ground up.
The Campion College alumnus says he failed A'Levels in order to play Manning Cup football for his alma mater. He worked for a year to save funds for university education.
Armed with a B.Sc. in management studies, he set out to chart a course for success, gaining
valuable experience at some of the island's major companies.
The result: Mr. Reid earned himself the reputation as the 'start-up' man because of his ability to move companies from failure to success. His passions include sports and his job. He is motivated when business thrives.
Mr. Reid avoids the limelight and does not belong to the corporate profiling clique. Married, with three daughters, he now finds himself in a learning phase as he helps his girls with their lessons.
He spoke with The Gleaner about the journey that led him from pounding the pavement as a salesman to the top job at Pepsi Jamaica.
BE: Where did you get your first job after university?
AR: Life has come full circle in some ways because my first job was with the then Desnoes and Geddes (D&G), now Red Stripe, as sales supervisor for Kingston, St. Mary and St. Thomas. I did that for a couple years and needed to return to Kingston, although the
experience was good and I enjoyed it immensely.
I was a newly-married man and since the company could not
facilitate the move, I went to Gillette Caribbean as a salesman on a route from Morant Bay to Savanna-la-Mar. From Gillette, I moved on to Wisynco Trading as a salesman and spent just over a year before moving on to Kiskimo, which was bought out by my next boss, Cremo Limited. They bought out the operations, brands, and some of the trademarks. Nestle now owns Cremo.
While at Kiskimo, I became a
marketing assistant and got the opportunity for my first junior
managerial position at Petcom. I was on the ground floor with my mentor, L.G. Brown. I was a member of the project team that started the first gas station in Portmore.
When that was close to completion in 1989, Dr. David McNeil invited me to come to Cremo as marketing and sales manager. I stayed for eight years, repositioning Cremo as the market leader in diary products. We took icicles and fudges and turned them into
exciting new products with new packaging.
That was good training for me and I am grateful to Dr. McNeil for his faith in taking on a youngster with no managerial experience but with luck and guidance, the company grew and we turned the business around. We launched the ultra high temperature (UHT) concept packaging for Long Life Mlk) products can be kept fresh in an unrefrigerated state.
I launched a distribution network islandwide independent of what existed before. It was a whole new paradigm and it was the cutting edge for me, starting from ground zero and building what is a very successful line.
Coca-Cola was relaunching and they needed someone who could take business from ground zero, so they sent for the 'start-up' man.
I was recommended and I moved across the road two years during which I put them back in the trade; getting sales, hiring and trucking systems going.
We were aided by events in the market at the time. I firmly believe that good luck is the meeting place of opportunity and preparedness.
The real challenge was bringing them back but they have
subsequently moved to Trinidad.
BE: When did you start working with Pepsi Jamaica?
AR: When I left, I did some
private consultancy for a few months and then D&G sold out its alcoholic beverages to Diageo and divested soft drinks to Pepsi in 1999. I came on board in March 2000.
Pepsi Jamaica is a subsidiary of Pepsi Americas, the second largest bottling group in the world. Pepsi Americas has a Caribbean platform, they started with Puerto Rico and are now in Trinidad and The Bahamas. We were in Barbados but are now out (there is only a distributor in Barbados.
BE: Do you have plans to
further expand in the region?
AR: We are there not under the auspices of Pepsi Americas but we are looking at expansion. All eyes are on Cuba but, as an American company, we cannot touch that yet. Opportunities are also in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. There are Pepsi bottlers in these countries but not under Pepsi Americas. Pepsi International is a marketing and syrup manufacturing company; they sell the syrup to
bottlers worldwide. D&G was a bottler for Pepsi International, so we now have that role. We buy the syrup then bottle and distribute and they market.
BE: How has it been, are you profitable?
AR: The first year was good. Despite starting in May, we were able to close on a full-year plan. We met targets. The year 2002 was flat there was growth but nothing spectacular. 2003 was devastating the over 21 per cent devaluation in the dollar wreaked havoc on the business. We could not raise prices so the company absorbed it and we had tremendous fallout.
It forced us into recovery mode in 2004; we had to give up some market share, we took the hard decision to increase prices to recover the previous year's losses. It is a competitive business. In 2004, we met our plan, we returned a minor profit that was good considering the heavy capitalisation that took place. In 2005, the plan is to put black in the two important lines on our books and remove the brackets, so far so good. Volumes were soft in the first two months but they are trending up since March.
BE: Did you have to give up markets?
AR: No, there just was not the level of purchases as before and other companies benefited. But it's been a growth industry.
Last year, we toned down
volumes. Last June, we launched Essentials, our bottled water, and benefited from Hurricane Ivan, after which demand increased. We produce water from our own wells on property.
We have a 20-ounce and a two-litre size bottled water. We were importing Tropicana juice drink and we have now begun the process of manufacturing them here - another addition to the product list. We make two flavours fruit punch and strawberry pineapple. By year end, we will be manufacturing the full portfolio of five flavours. We are now importing the three we do not make.
We are awaiting certification and other technical aspects before we are ready to go. The manufacturing plant has to be ready. It will require more work. Pepsi is here and we are a visionary company, we can show Jamaica that motivation is what it's about.
BE: Do you get a chance to own a piece of the company?
AR: Yes, all employees who started in 2000 had the opportunity to buy Pepsi Jamaica shares at a special rate. Subsequently, any employee can buy at the regular price and the stock is doing well.
BE: How many persons do you employ and give me your
comments on the view that many persons entering the workforce are paper-qualified but have no common sense or the right work ethic/attitude.
AR: I am of the opinion that it's work ethic that is missing. There were things we understood as
needing to be done in order to reach where we are going and it is not a quality seen often today.
There is a lack of the value that says something is there for me, how do I get it? What is the path to my goal? What are the processes I must go through?
I have been 'victimised' by a statement from very early in my career; a colleague asked me, "how you a gwaan like a you own de place?" But my answer was that I intend to one day. You have to be prepared for that, so you know how to act. Even as a salesman, I behaved like I was the sales manager giving attention to detail and caring. That is what's missing today.
We have people who are waiting to be called up before they act. My favourite analogy is that Bob Marley did not wait until Island Records signed him before he started putting out the hits.
It is the good work you do before, the attitude, ambition, focus, detail. My main issue is job loyalty: This is what allows you to be able to take care of family and other needs. Of the things you can choose, the job should come first. My ability to earn is very
important. So I have a problem with shoddy workers.
We have 300 members of staff here and they are good. We began with a lot of enthusiasm five years ago and with the challenges over the years, that has waned and some were worried. But the company is in good health and on a growth path. We are now faced with recapturing the initial excitement.
BE: Is there a problem for your company and staff that you are located in close proximity to
communities that are violence-prone? Does that affect
productivity and attendance?
AR: Thankfully, we have not had a lot of that. We've only had issues in pockets. The good thing is that in our employment policy, we do not localise it. There are people from a wide cross-section of communities from Portmore to uptown Kingston as well as the surrounding areas
That was by design. We inherited staff from D&G, too, but we also employ persons who are new to the industry. The melting pot has worked well to pull together people who are highly motivated,
ambitious and who brought new experiences to the table. We are in a violence-prone area but we are fairly unaffected.
BE: What do you see for the next five years?
AR: We contract out distribution outside of Kingston; our sister
company, Red Stripe, carries out our distribution in the other parishes. So, our challenge going
forward is to grow volumes
sufficiently so we can stand alone and be in full control of our own destiny. We would be able to hire an extra 180 persons that way.
While we look to that, we are retooling treatment plants and diversifying. We want to expand our juice offering beyond what we have now. Tropicana juice drinks are the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, we want to be a
category one plant capable of producing hot-fill juices. We will be a complete beverage company and not just a soft drink company.
Manufacturing Gatoraid would be the coup we have ambitions to do that to serve the CARICOM region and be more competitive.
As a Jamaican, that would make me proud to be able to take some international brands here and
introduce them to our local fruits so that we provide employment that facilitates our agriculture. TruJuice is a fine example of the quality product we can produce.
BE: So if that happens, local farmers would do well to start increasing citrus production?
AR: Yes, we currently provide grapefruit seedlings for the Citrus Growers Association. Last year, it was 10,000 and this year we will do the same. The grapefruit industry is volatile and many farmers left it for oranges. Grapefruit trees take 10 years to mature, so we saw the industry under threat and took an active role to perpetuate the growth.
There is a specific taste to our grapefruit that makes Ting unique. Others have tried to capture it but cannot. The master blenders from Red Stripe are to be credited for that. It's excellent and we export a lot. We now want to get a foot into Japan.
BE: With the stability in the foreign exchange situation, do you anticipate any new problems in that direction?
AR: It's remarkable how well it has held and the utilisation of the reserves plays a role in that but we have had turnaround in tourism and good signals in agriculture and mining which augur well for
stability.
We project some slippage the last 12 months have reinforced the view that we are in a good place with longer-term plans against the dollar. When we go to regional
presentations, no one else but Jamaica has a column for the
foreign exchange impact.
BE: With mergers and buyouts seeming to be the way to go in business, do you see any such eventuality in your future?
AR: We are part of a company that has enormous growth
potential before we start looking outside and Gatoraid is one
example.
We can bring on to the table all we have to offer. Pepsi International changed its name from Pepsi Beverages International to embrace the food side of the business and we own Quaker Oats and a lot more products that are now distributed by other companies.
Pepsi Jamaica has enormous growth potential so before mergers, sellouts and buyouts, we could implode a bit and take up more of what's ours in Jamaica and
elsewhere.
BE: How do you demonstrate good corporate citizenship?
AR: We are a big supporter of football and the Inter-Secondary School Association annual championships, the Waterhouse Football Club, an initiative started by Tankweld, to bring corporate Jamaica in line with assisting a community through sports; we played a major role in building the stadium in Waterhouse and it is a source of pride for the citizens.
We were part of Recycle for Life but that came to a halt when government announced its intention to put a deposit take on plastic bottles. We contributed in excess of $20 million annually to the company it helped schools and others to earn revenue. It pained me to shut it down.
BE: What do you see as the future for Andrew Reid? Have you reached where you want to be?
AR: I would like to travel and I see opportunities for that with Pepsi. I have aspirations for that, maybe regionally first. I am a
corporate person. I have done my own business but there is a need for Jamaicans to step up to the plate and grasp the opportunities that are out there.
It is embarrassing to see the number of expatriates who we still need to put in senior positions. We are graduating many managers, so where are they? Is it a lack of
talent or attitude?
We must ensure that we have a workforce of qualified and capable people to take positions when the world comes here to establish business.
Work ethic is vital. We need more of the people who 'gwaan like they own the business'. We need to stop saying "we nuh come yah fe count cow, we come yah fi drink milk". I want to count cows.
BE: How do you relax on the weekends?
AR: Sports is my main thing and I am now the chauffeur for my three daughters one in university and two in high school. I also love the movies and go every week. I go to the theatre, stay close to home and read.
BE: What do you think needs to be done to decrease crime in our country?
AR: We need more police presence. I have seen examples where once they are around in a meaningful way, things tone down. I come from the Red Hills Road area and when 100 Lane became volatile, the police moved in, working on shifts, and became a part of the community.
A few months after they moved out, there was a massacre. We need to get more small outposts in areas where there are crime issues with uniformed patrolling and presence and if soldiers are necessary, use them too.
BE: So you don't buy the argument that poverty causes crime?
AR: No. There are people who are poor who would like to work and some who have no intention of working but are satisfied to take from others. They want to get it fast and easy. Some come to work and do nothing. they adopt attitudes that will make them lose the job. So it has nothing to do with being poor.
