BUSINESS HAS BEEN the centre of Geoffrey Cave’s life, to the extent that some people may venture to suggest it is in his genes.
The septuagenarian’s outstanding contribution to business in general has earned him the title “Sir”, bestowed in the knighthood he was awarded in the recent National Independence Honours. Days after being dubbed by Governor General Sir Elliott Belgrave at the Government House investiture ceremony, Sir Geoffrey responded with characteristic humility at being nationally recognised.
“I grew up knowing that I was going to college and I was coming home to run a family business. That was my mission in life so I went to McGill University to return to take over the family business,” he told the SUNDAY SUN last week.
The Broad Street department store Cave Shepherd and Company limited stands out as a beacon of Cave’s success at steering a fledgling business founded by his entrepreneur grandfather into the 21st century, adapting it to changing times and developing business models suitable for the prevailing business climate.
He was around age 20 when he joined the company at the feet of a “forward-thinking father”, the late Maurice Cave. “He really put a lot of effort into changing Barbados,” Cave said of his father.
From as young as nine years of age, the Lodge School boy was being prepared for the world of business by a father who insisted on punctuality as part of business acumen that the elder Cave shared with his son and employees of Cave Shepherd.
In a funny aside, Sir Geoffrey told of his own early exposure to his dad’s lessons: “As a youngster I remember coming in at four ‘o clock in the morning and dad would be sitting in the gallery waiting, and he would say ‘morning, Geoff’, and I would say, ‘goodnight dad” and he would tell me ‘go and get some shut-eye, but I am going to wake you up . . . you got to be at work before eight o clock.”
Sir Geoffrey learnt the intricacies of business from a father who told him and others in his employ, “always be nice to everybody coming through that door. You don’t know what they have in their pocket, so you make sure whether the person is nicely dressed or badly dressed, be nice to everyone.”
He said it was this kind of advice that taught him the respect he showed to everyone. While he was at the helm at Cave Shepherd, he was often a familiar figure spotted on the sales floor. He would leave the confines of his office and walk around keeping an eye on things, interacting with customers, offering them assistance and advice on their shopping.
“This is important,” Sir Geoffrey says. “You have got to know what people need. If you don’t pay attention to that you can be out of business fairly quickly.”
He looks back on a past when Cave Shepherd – still referred to as The Ideal Store by a generation for whom it was Barbados’ best known and best stocked department store – catered to a diverse Barbadian population.
Dominant retailer
“I would say we were very much the dominant retailer in Barbados,” Sir Geoffrey observed about a time when Bridgetown was the dominant commercial centre, which is far from today when the city is struggling to compete with fast-growing new commercial centres such as Warrens, Wildey and the Sheraton Centre.
Like others have said, Sir Geoffrey shares the view that Barbados’ main town “is dying”, His dream is for a regenerated, lively city, dotted with upmarket housing, restaurants and the kind of commercial activity that would return vibrancy and activity to the island’s main thoroughfare when the sun goes down. In this vision he sees residential buildings fronting the scenic Carlisle Bay in a section of Bridgetown where the current image is of business desertion and abandonment by foot traffic.
“Bridgetown is such a lovely city. it needs to get back its life and we have to rebuild it,” Sir Geoffrey remarked.
He speaks from a position of experience. He was part of the family rebuilding following a devastating 1969 fire which razed the popular Broad Street store.
“We lost everything, the names of everybody. The fire was on a Wednesday night. When I went to work the next morning, we had people to pay but no names to pay them.” He still lists that fire as one of the “most outstanding memories” and challenges of his life.
For one thing, it demonstrated the grit of this Barbadian business family who Sir Geoffrey said met the next day, debated whether they should rebuild or change business course altogether, and finally decided to rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
“It was a different kind of world that we were living in then.” In less than three years a spanking new building went up, though Sir Geoffrey admitted it was “a struggle to get restarted”.
He is now retired from his management position of Cave Shepherd and Company Limited, but retains the chairmanship of the Cave Shepherd Group which has grown over the years. Again, this is due to the strategic decisions taken at junctures to keep the store in step with the changing business climate.
As the focus shifted to tourism, Cave Shepherd made the change from an “old world” model to a “new world” operation in which the needs of the emerging international tourism industry that was impacting Barbados were factored into Cave Shepherd’s business development plans.
Sir Geoffrey explained: “What was built as a city for a sugar economy was now turning into a tourism economy and you now had to change to cater to what was a new group of people coming to Barbados.”
New emphasis was placed on the duty-free component of the business, as Sir Geoffrey observed: “The old Broad Street store catered specifically to the older folk, and we do still cater to that group but our focus now has been towards the tourism market.”
Though his only son Roger has followed him in business, forming his own company which is under the Cave Shepherd group umbrella, Sir Geoffrey is realistic about the question of succession in what was once a Caves entity only. “It is a different world now” he said.
“In my days succession was the thing. In today’s world it is a more corporate world”. He is aware of the possibility that a complete stranger could one day be at the helm of the business his grandfather started. But it is a reality he accepts.
At age 74, he maintains a reduced level of public service engagement and still puts in a solid day’s work for the various business connections he still has, even if doing shorter hours. In recent times he has extended his business interest to the field of renewable energy, sensing the need for a shift to the use of alternative energy.
Amidst all this, three days a week he rises before dawn for his 5 a.m. gym workout, since he no longer manages to engage in his favourite sporting pastimes of tennis and golf.
The soft-spoken knight and veteran businessman remains strong on family values. For him “family is everything” and evenings are spent with his wife Anne Lady Cave, who has stood by him for over 50 years.
“With family and plenty of friends, I am happy every day,” he said. (GC)