Business View Caribbean Dec. 2018 / Jan. 2019

42 43 J.E. BERGASSE & COMPANY LTD. status as a top “single source” service provider in St. Lucia. According to Bergasse, “The only thing that survived from the first 60 years of the company is insurance. That is still an integral part of the J.E. Bergasse Group.We’ve since divested the insur- ance business off as a subsidiary into its own sep- arate company–United Insurance Agents (Saint Lucia) Ltd.–where we’re agents for Massy United Insurance Ltd. In all, 90 employees work for the Group at four locations: our head office just north of Castries, a branch office in downtown Castries, and operations in Soufrière on the west coast, and Vieux Fort on the very south of the island.” J.E. Bergasse moved from its historical location on Brazil Street in Castries to new premises at Vide Bouteille in February 2002. The site inte- grates all the business units – Insurance, Tech- nology, and Document Centre services – into a more spacious, productive, and customer-friendly facility. At the same time, the company opened With customers at Future Of Work Event a satellite Document Centre in the old FedEx offices on Bourbon Street to service customers in the downtown core of Castries. That location also provides Internet Café services and is an autho- rized FedEx shipment center. In its technology division, J.E. Bergasse rep- resents hardware products from Xerox (the flagship brand), along with Lenovo, HP Enter- prise, Lexmark, and RISO, and all the service and services that entails. The company has a cadre of people out in the field selling hardware and solutions, and office supplies (ink, toner, paper, etc.), while its popular B2B online shopping site consistently raises the sales figures. In addition, a technical area provides warranty and service work to the hardware platform, as well as analysts who provide advice to customers on how, why, and what to set up. Bergasse notes, “In the last five years, we also launched a bill payment platform called Sure- Pay. In a nutshell, we enter into agreement with various billers (utility companies – telecommu- nications, electric, water) to provide collection service.We then enter into agreements with other companies to serve as collection points, where the public can walk into the grocery store, for ex- ample, and pay their light bill. It helps the utility company and the consumer with bill payment. That’s another service we provide. Then there’s our whole document center arena, which uses our own equipment and technology to provide the public the ability to do copies, printing, wide Xerox’s Country Manager Joel Mendoza presenting at JEB’s Future Of Work Event TRAVELLING SALESMEN… OLD SCHOOL In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Peter Ber- gasse and Hollis Bristol travelled the Carib- bean selling their wares. Appreciate, though, that travelling the islands back then was not like today, where you jump on a plane and go. As Anthony Bergasse shares, “My mother tells the story that when my father was going to places like Dominica, the only way was by schooner. So, if there was no wind, the boat just sat. A two-day trip could be two weeks.When I first came back here in 1983, I went to Dominica with Hollis and was amazed at how many people knew him. But this was because of the way business used to be transacted. They would actually stay at a customer’s home. Much like today’s Airbnb– sort of forward to the past.”