In Business And Be
p. 28 · Read in the full issue
How To Succeed
Really Trying
From a Tarawa correspondent There is a somewhat bitter lesson in the record annual profit of more than $A200,000 just shown by the GEIC Wholesale Society on its diverse shipping, retailing and agency activities.
The profit represents about 15 per cent, on paid-up capital.
Largely responsible for this profit is Mr, W. J. Kirkby-Jones who was appointed general manager of the society in November, 1966. An Englishman who had been living in Australia for the previous 15 years, he arrived with a proven record of turning losses to profits through strong management. The society had never made a loss, but maximum profits up to that time were less than $60,000 annually.
Mr. Kirkby-Jones brought with him several new executives from Aus tralia, and the whole team—of six— set about making the society an efficient commercial enterprise.
The team soon found that the retailing side of the organisation had the biggest headaches of management and the least profit. The society un economically ordered goods from Australia in great variety but in small quantities merely so that expatriates could buy their pet brands of baby food and cornflakes.
Uneconomic
Also the society’s vessel, Moana Raoi, operated a haphazard, un economic schedule to the outer islands, ignoring some islands for weeks at a time and visiting others 100 frequently.
So the retailing side was tightened up and a new, bigger and faster Moana Raoi was bought and went into service early last year. She was placed on a schedule which utilised her almost 24 hours a day instead of about 10 hours, and for the first time the society’s flagship made a substantial profit.
The Moana Raoi began a new trade with the Marshall Islands, in US Micronesia, and this service has become one of the society’s biggest profit makers—earning a substantial profit last year and taking about $300,000 worth of Australian goods into the Marshalls.
All the society’s other activities, since the advent of Mr, Kirkby- Jones, have been redirected and
speeded up. A new payment scheme for copra was begun; a new service with the Moana Raoi direct from Tarawa to Sydney was approved after many months of negotiation by Mr.
Kirkby-Jones (it will arrive in Aus tralia on its first voyage in mid- August, and will carry 2,800 tons of GEIC copra to Australia each year).
Meanwhile the society’s two retail stores on Tarawa —at Betio and Bikenibeu have contributed less than two per cent, of the society’s total profits, but have accounted for more than 90 per cent, of the criticism levelled at the society by local residents (both expatriate and islander). If people haven’t been able to buy what they want at the stores they have complained. The new management’s policies of buying fewer varieties and of cutting down on credit have brought resentment, and Mr. Jones has not exactly been “Mr. Popular” in some quarters.
His trouble is that he is a business man, determined to put the society on a business footing, to tighten up on bad debts, to replace people whom he felt weren’t helping the society make money for the GEIC. He has concentrated on putting business on a profitable footing and that record $200,000 profit for this year has shown that perhaps he knows what he is at.
In fact, the new management team has reduced the general level of prices while improving the profits,
and it has put big emphasis oi improving the level of services, par ticularly to the outer islands, to satisfy the co-operative stores.
But the architect of all this, Mr Kirkby-Jones, is not with the GEIC any more.
One night in June, when tht 1967-68 accounts were being finalised the society’s retail stores were foum to have not the small profit expected but a loss of $24,000.
Mr. Kirkby-Jones himself madi inquiries, which later were the subjec of considerable criticism. The result he dismissed 20 Gilbertese employee from the stores. The loss, he found was due to goods having been taket by staff from the stores on credit.
Just where credit ended or thel began was an interesting distinctioi which nobody in authority wa apparently prepared to determine— certainly not the 11-man board c the society, comprising governmer officials and islanders, which set u a committee to inquire into the los?
The committee called for th resignation of the general manage and the society’s chief buyer, Mi Derek Lowe, who was on leave £ the time. No charges were mad against any of the dism i s s e Gilbertese.
'New look'
Mr. Kirkby-Jones felt he, a general manager, was responsible an complied with the committee’s reconi mendation. His resignation wa accepted.
The society’s chief accountan Mr. K. G. Ussher, who has bee a right-hand man for Mr. Kirkbj Jones in the “new look” societ: declined to renew his own contra* and went south in support of M!
Kirkby-Jones. The chief buyer, i late July, was still in Melbourne an nobody knows whether he will retun So the Wholesale Society has noi lost the men who, for the first timi put it on a business footing.
What was it all about? You coul* if you like, call it a clash not o personalities, but of cultures.
Mr. Kirkby-Jones is a businessma who made the mistake of trying t operate by normal business principle in a group of islands in mid-Pacifii He went too fast. He did not taJ into account that the islanders, an some of the expatriates, do n<i necessarily want to work to businei principles. It is easier to mal decisions for reasons of expedient than principle. Progress is a goo thing, so long as nobody is actual! inconvenienced by it.
When you follow this philosophr nobody wins, nobody loses. Not theory, anyway.