Business View Caribbean | November 2020

68 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN NOVEMBER 2020 vehicles. Neil reports, “So I rented a location and had a secretary, and my wife was at my side. We were getting somewhere. But notwithstanding the problem of getting material. For example, on Monday morning I would go to a store to get material for two or three jobs and it might take me half a day, because there was no one-stop plumbing place in Jamaica that had everything to do the simplest job. You had to go to several different locations. And nobody would pay you for the time it took to find those goods. So you had to find a way to cover that cost.” So in 1988, Neil registered Jamaica Plumbing Supplies and continued to work and grow the business alongside his wife and family. Eventually, it came to the stage where it was time to open a store, which was a rented space in a shopping plaza. Neil explains, “But when the first container that we imported came in, we actually had to store 50 percent at home in my carport because the plaza store was just too small. That was good, because it forced us to buy our first place. We renovated it and converted it to commercial because it was in a semi- residential area. As we continued to grow, in 2007, we moved to another location on Molynes Road, where we are now. Immediately after we moved, we went from making around 800,000 to 1.2 million Jamaican dollars per month, to now making $4 million per month. And the sky’s the limit.” By increasing their footprint and amount of inventory, the company has created a greater demand, and now sells to retail customers, general contractors, developers, and plumbers; to the government, the hospitality sector, and homeowners in the 14 parishes of Jamaica. The stores are open six days a week and customers are lined up every single day to pick up supplies. Jamaica Plumbing Supplies has a two-pronged competitive advantage – a combination of good pricing and great service. “We go for quality,” says Neil. “We even have the exclusive rights from some manufacturers. Ninety-five percent of our