Business View Caribbean Dec. 2018 / Jan. 2019

44 45 J.E. BERGASSE & COMPANY LTD. format, colour, black and white, engineering draw- ings - whatever.” Certainly, there is competition out there –other firms representing competitive brands and all fighting for the same piece of the pie. But its fine, long-term reputation stands the Bergasse name in good stead. For a long time, to the man in the street, it was known as simply ‘Xerox.’ They would say, “Ya, just go to Xerox,” when they were pointing at the building that clearly said J.E. Bergasse on the door. And people knew what they meant. The government of St. Lucia continues to be a major customer. And Bergasse works very hard to main- tain that relationship, both from a hardware sup- ply standpoint and a services supply standpoint. In terms of other people they subcontract with to bring products to market, there’s a memorandum of understanding of how they’ll work together to benefit each other’s businesses. J.E. Bergasse is definitely a family-owned com- pany– two families, in fact. As Bergasse explains, “There is my family, the Bergasse family, but Hol- lis Bristol is an important partner in the business, so his family is also involved. Back in the mid-‘90s, we recognized that if we continued trying to op- erate as family businesses are run, we would end up in even more trouble. So, we started looking for professional people to come in as managers to help us raise the profile and professionalism in the way we go to market. If you look at our web- site and our corporate profile, you’ll find there’s a sales manager for equipment and solutions, for B2B ecommerce, for service and support, and for the document center.We also upped our game in terms of the tools we use to manage the compa- ny. In a little company like this, we’re using very first world tools –our CRM and our back office software is all tightly integrated.We’re practicing what we preach about technology.” As for the near-term future, the company will probably “take its first steps off the rock” in the next six to eight months to provide services in St. Vincent and Grenada – an expansion that’s been in the works for some time. Looking fur- ther ahead, the objectives are to keep abreast of J.E.Bergasse’s Service Team in action Anthony Bergasse Document Centre staff at work Donation to Levern Spencer, St.Lucia High Jumper