BARBADOS IS IN LINE for another round of major investment from Cable & Wireless, which trades as FLOW.
Fresh from revamping its Swan Street, Bridgetown store and reopening it last December as a state-of-the-art experience centre offering all of its services, FLOW management has announced that additional investment will come in the “next two months” when a second store is transformed.
Other stores will also undergo similar work in the coming months, with the Barbados effort to be used as a model for such undertakings in the other Caribbean markets where the company operates.
Corporate communications manager Alan Harris said the revamped Swan Street store had an enlarged footprint with several interactive technology-based stations, including bill kiosks that were faster and more convenient for customers.
This was in addition to a number of flat screen TVs showing FLOW TV programming, a gaming centre, and other services, including a series of charging stations for users of hand-held devices such as mobile phones and tablets regardless of whether they were FLOW customers.
Elaborating on the effort during an interview, FLOW Barbados’ head of sales Paul Hayward told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY the company had established “a central investment platform” for the store renovations, which would see the company pumping more money into the Barbados economy as it enhanced the experience for customers and its staff.
“The investment that we are looking to bring in is Caribbean investment. We are not looking to go to America or the UK or wherever. We want to keep that investment within the Caribbean,” he said.
“All of the islands across the region are taking advantage of this. We have all gotten involved in the actual development. We all got involved in the actual final look and design of the stores. We have taken that investment, identified it and have been fully supported by our board…and I think that’s the important thing.”
He added: “The board has seen the opportunity to bring this new dimension and they are prepared to put investment behind it. So that is the real critical element. The investment is there; it’s been given to us to invest within the Caribbean and within each island.”
Hayward said a lot of thought had gone into the new store model at Swan Street.
“We want to take the product to the customer and we want to do that in different ways. So all of our stores will become experience centres over a period of time. We are learning a lot from this and then we will take that to all the stores. We are going to do a constant roll-out,” he explained. (SC)
