De­spite op­er­at­ing one of the most suc­cess­ful re­tail op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Pen­ny­wise group is look­ing in­to en­ter­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor as a re­sult of the on­go­ing for­eign ex­change short­age in the coun­try.

The planned piv­ot in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing was hint­ed at in a speech be­fore the rib­bon cut­ting by man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and CEO Dalvi Paladee as he not­ed sev­er­al geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues had im­pact­ed prices around the world. Paladee con­firmed those chal­lenges had made it dif­fi­cult for the com­pa­ny to main­tain prices at a pre­ferred lev­el.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing push was con­firmed by Dr Shiv­um “Shi­va” Paladee, a di­rec­tor of Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics, af­ter the group opened its largest plaza and largest Pen­ny­wise stand­alone store on Fri­day at the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed Pen­ny­wise Plaza on the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

“The biggest chal­lenge that we have in busi­ness right now is get­ting for­eign ex­change. We have been nav­i­gat­ing it. We get it from the banks, but you know they’re charg­ing us a pre­mi­um rate for it, and we get when they have avail­able or when they have avail­abil­i­ty. But you know, it’s some­thing that we have no con­trol over,” said Paladee in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at the open­ing.

“That’s why we an­nounced to­day that we should be head­ing in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing. It’s not be­cause we want to man­u­fac­ture prod­ucts, it’s be­cause we need to start ex­port­ing in or­der to earn some of our for­eign ex­change. So that’s re­al­ly the rea­son be­hind that de­ci­sion.”

It is part of the group’s con­tin­ued strat­e­gy to ex­pand. Dalvi Paladee stat­ed on the podi­um that while the com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly has four ware­hous­es, he is look­ing for land on which to build and he urged the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in at­ten­dance to help the group find a lo­ca­tion for the next step.

The open­ing at­tract­ed sev­er­al gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Khadi­jah Ameen, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Col­in Go­sine as well as Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, sev­er­al ma­jor fig­ures in lo­cal busi­ness al­so at­tend­ed the open­ing.

The new store, which is 30,000 square feet in size, ac­cord­ing to Shi­va Paladee, was par­tial­ly built in re­sponse to cus­tomer com­plaints about space and long lines at the Trinci­ty Mall branch.

“We’re in Trinci­ty Mall, but the cus­tomers were com­plain­ing about the space with­in the store be­ing a lot small­er than the oth­er Pen­ny­wise stores. The cashiers al­ways have long lines, and here we have 15 cash reg­is­ters com­pared to the eight that we had in Trinci­ty Mall. So, it’s al­most dou­ble the amount. So, we’re try­ing to en­sure that cus­tomers don’t have to wait in lines,” he said.

As for the de­ci­sion to open a Plaza in an area which al­ready has es­tab­lish­ing shop­ping cen­tres such as East Gates Mall, Trinci­ty Mall and Pi­ar­co Plaza, the Pen­ny­wise group ex­plained the par­cel of land gave them the op­tion to build such a fa­cil­i­ty.

“When we were look­ing for prop­er­ty, we got this large piece of prop­er­ty avail­able. So we de­cid­ed to just open an­oth­er plaza as op­posed to just a stand­alone Pen­ny­wise,” said Paladee.

How­ev­er, Shi­va Paladee con­firmed that the new lo­ca­tion did not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly sig­nal the end of the Pen­ny­wise lo­ca­tion at Trinci­ty Mall, a lo­ca­tion that has seen a sig­nif­i­cant drop in the num­ber of ten­ants in re­cent years, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We are there at least un­til the end of the year. We are in a con­tract un­til next year. The ques­tion is if we’ll keep the store for the du­ra­tion of the year, or if we will just have to close the store. But we will be run­ning that store si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly while we are in (this lo­ca­tion),” he said.

The Pen­ny­wise group said it was thank­ful that it was able to not just find ten­ants for the lo­ca­tion and staffers.

He ex­plained, “It was fair­ly easy. See, the thing is, when we rent our prop­er­ties, we have a sim­i­lar phi­los­o­phy as we have for the rest of Pen­ny­wise. Which is the best prices na­tion­wide. So we try to en­sure that they pay a fair rent, and be­cause of that, it was fair­ly easy to fill out the ten­ants. I think we on­ly have three spots re­main­ing, so we didn’t have any is­sues at all with that.”

Shi­va felt how­ev­er the group’s com­pet­i­tive pay pack­ages for staff did help in that re­gard.

“Our em­ploy­ees are well paid. I mean it’s al­ways a dif­fi­cult task try­ing to get the best em­ploy­ees be­cause we have to hire and then kind of as­sess for a while and then see where we go. But yes, peo­ple ap­ply all the time to Pen­ny­wise. We have been for­tu­nate that we have a lot of very ded­i­cat­ed staff. As my broth­er said ear­li­er, the staff here worked hours and hours try­ing to put the store to­geth­er for to­day. So we re­al­ly are for­tu­nate, I guess, to have the staff that we have work­ing,” he said.

The open­ing of the brand’s newest and largest lo­ca­tion re­al­ly placed in­to per­spec­tive how far the com­pa­ny had come in its four decades of op­er­a­tions.

“It’s just been very hum­bling look­ing back at where Pen­ny­wise came from. You know, my grand­fa­ther start­ed walk­ing door to door. Then won a bi­cy­cle in a raf­fle. Used to sell door to door, rid­ing his bi­cy­cle, worked for some­body in a mar­ket stall, even­tu­al­ly owned a mar­ket stall,” said Shi­va.

“Then to see the third plaza come alive here with the largest Pen­ny­wise store is, think­ing back, just to be very grate­ful for the work that was put in be­fore us. For the man­age­ment that we have in Pen­ny­wise to al­low us to con­tin­ue grow­ing like this, and es­pe­cial­ly grate­ful for the cus­tomers that keep sup­port­ing us.”

Tan­coo hailed the ex­pan­sion of Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics as a sig­nal that the gov­ern­ment’s plans to strength­en the econ­o­my were slow­ly com­ing to fruition de­spite a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion.

“I think that the open­ing of this store here by Pen­ny­wise is a sig­nal to the rest of the coun­try that there’s con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my of Trinidad. There’s con­fi­dence in the poli­cies of the gov­ern­ment, and that things are start­ing to look much, much bet­ter. We’re not where we want to be yet, but we are get­ting there. I think it’s a sub­stan­tial demon­stra­tion by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my,” said Tan­coo, in an in­ter­view with re­porters short­ly af­ter the rib­bon cut­ting.