Luis Carrillo is among the many local entrepreneurs whose businesses have been caught up in the COVID-19 whirlwind and who are now slowly and patiently extracting themselves from its destructive forces.
The managing director and owner of the Dwellings Group has certainly mastered the art of transforming homes into exquisite places of comfort through his company’s unique imports but the pandemic has forced him to move swiftly to regroup in order to survive this tumultuous period and thrive again.
The businessman is a former senior executive with Shell who worked with its operations in The Netherlands, the Dominican Republic and Barbados. He later became a Regional Director with the SOL Group.
In 2006, the mechanical engineering graduate from Texas A&M University in the United States took the bold plunge of establishing Dwellings, after leaving the SOL group in 2005. His company comprises Dwellings, Liliplum Kids and a licensed Ashley Furniture Home Store. The enterprises have been through the financial crisis that gripped the world from 2007 to 2008 and the years-long fall-out that followed.
However, it was the sudden and dramatic events of the last three months following the island’s first reported case of the novel coronavirus that has been acutely disruptive for the businessman. In a recent interview with Barbados TODAY, Carrillo spoke of the difficult decision he had to take to relieve all 35 team members from their jobs as business came to a virtual halt.
Carrillo is slowly rehiring laid-off employees, but he explains that process will be driven “as the business demands it”. One of the other victims of the COVID-19 experience for him was the decision he took to close the doors of the Ashley Furniture HomeStore at Haggatt Hall, St Michael and relocate the operations to a smaller footprint at the Millhouse, St. Thomas.
“The Ashley Store is very much still open for business… Ashley is the same company as Dwellings but in these times, you really have to find ways to operate more cost effectively. So, by being able to co-locate in the same facility where we are at Dwellings, it was a way to save costs without compromising what was being offered to the customer.”
Not an easy road
“Since we have reopened, people are gradually coming back out… So far, the feedback we have got on that move has been very positive. They like the fact that they can now shop both stores in one location. For us, it represents a more effective way of operating.”
But it has not been easy for Carrillo and the management team as they wade through this period of great uncertainty brought about by the health and economic crisis.
“Right now, we are still evaluating what the long-term impact of this is [likely to be]. We went from a situation where we had to lay off pretty much all of our employees and then we have been bringing back employees based on the requirements of the business.
“It is too early to predict what the full impact will be but I guess, in general, if the business has permanently dropped off, then we would have to find a way to operate with fewer staffing costs as well,” he assessed.
“I would say that any business owner needs to recognise that business will not be the same. It will definitely be in decline. Perhaps there may be some fortunate few, depending on which sector you are in, who may have found a way to make more money in this COVID-19 period when we were closed. A lot of supermarkets… seemed to have done pretty good business, but in the longer term, the economy has shrunk.”
The entrepreneur is adamant that the re-emergence of the tourism sector is critical to Barbados’ economic revival and that of most businesses on the island.
“Tourism represents about 36 per cent of our economy. Even if you are not directly involved in the tourism product… it has a secondary impact because people who work in those businesses spend money. They are losing money and jobs [and] therefore cannot spend elsewhere in the economy. [Tourism] is way too big a blow not to affect elsewhere in the country.
“Every business needs to expect a very sharp drop off and you need to account for how you will operate in this new environment. We’re getting smarter at how we do things and if you don’t change anything I think you will see a very significant drop. This isn’t going to be like a little gradual thing that you would see if there was the onset of a recession. It is going to be quite sudden.”
Bracing for tough times
Commenting on the timeline for return to some semblance of normalcy on the local business landscape, Carrillo said all roads lead to tourism and the resumption of international leisure and travel. Of course, he is aware that much depends on people’s confidence in their ability to travel safely without undue risks to their health.
“We are all part of the economy. We have heard some statistics about double-digit declines in terms of GDP. That will affect everyone in the economy regardless of what sector you are in. We just need to brace for that. The key is how do we all survive so that in the years to come, we can rebuild the economy to where it was before?”
And for the employees of the Dwellings group who are still out of work, Carrillo told Barbados TODAY: “We have not made any permanent decisions as it relates to the number of people that will be fully restored. We would like to think it would be 100 per cent but I don’t believe that will be the case. There will inevitably be some form of consolidation, but we are still working on what that number will be.” (IMC1)
