"The key to the success of La Sirena is work"

SANTO DOMINGO. The Ramos Group, one of the principle leaders of Dominican commerce, has a history of successes which began with 8 employees and now has upwards of 10,000. There are also 36 stores in the principle provinces, of which 24 are superstores.

But the real key to these successes is in "the work, tenacity, persistence, and restlessness" stressed Roman Ramos Uria, the founding partner of La Sirena and the president of the Board of Directors of the Ramos Group, who by 1965, in the middle of the revolution, was in charge of La Sirena. This was considered to be a bad year by the commercial sector.

Don Roman Ramos Uria and his daughter Mercedes Ramos Fernandez spoke of his story of success in commerce during his participation in Dialogo Libre, the Diario Libre program of interviews, which is hosted by the director, Adriano Miguel Tejada, and that this time included the deputy director, Ines Aizpun; the editor in chief; Eli Heiliger, the editor of the webpage www.diariolibre.com; Jose Javier, the economics editor and Adonis Diaz, journalist.

Ramos Uria said that the Ramos Group will continue expanding, and he cited the example of job creation which goes together with the growth. He added that it was not possible to add new stores without having more employees. "So we are going to continue growing, and one of our greatest satisfactions is to have the employees that we have always had and always try to help them," he stressed.

For her part, Ramos Fernandez said that today in the Dominican Republic there is a lot of opportunity for growth and that in the major cities there is also the possibility of growing with other formats.

She added that there is a special characteristic of the Group and it is that of 36 stores, 24 are superstores, which she considers to be pretty aggressive when you see everything in the superstore format.

She pointed out that with the Pola format, for example, which is closest to many people, "we have left it like that on purpose, but we see an opportunity to grow with Pola, which is a medium sized supermarket, which offers fresh product, good prices and service to clients."

She also talked about the Aprezio, which are small businesses that are going into the barrios and offering them other alternatives to the clients with less buying power.

The Aprezio

The Ramos Group is also launching another type of store to reach areas of lower economic resources: The Aprecio. According to Ramos Uria what drove him to launch this type of business was to reach out further. "To get into places which the big stores do not serve, which is to say, it is sort of as if we were newspaper distributors. It is not the same in the capital or in Santiago as what you can have in other places," said Ramos Uria, the president of Ramos Group.

He added: "We reach another public with these stores, the day to day public, not the ones that buy every fortnight or every month."

He said right away: "We reach the public that goes to buy five hundred or three hundred pesos every day, and buys without a lot of excess or luxury."

For Ramos Uria the idea is "to get closer to the client. This is our objective and we have reached into places which we could not reach with the big formats." Haiti would be an ideal market or a store on the frontier

Haiti would be an ideal market or a store on the frontier

Roman Ramos Uria, the founding partner of La Sirena, and president of the Board of Directors of the Ramos Group, said that they do not have plans to expand overseas. He added that the most natural place would be Haiti, but the truth is "we do not dare."

"We would like to but, no, we do not dare. I have even thought of a store on the frontier, but this has not yet been decided," said Ramos Uria.

For her part, Mercedes Ramos Fernandez said that "Haiti should be our natural target market" since on the other islands there "are very strong competitors and we do not dare."

Moreover, in the case of Cuba-she said-there is a political situation that does not permit this sort of commerce, and because of this "then we believe that today in the Dominican Republic that is a lot of opportunity for growth and that in the major cities there is a possibility to grow with other formats" of the business.

Roman reveals that La Sirena was never for sale

Regarding the rumors about the possible sale of La Sirena to a United States chain, Roman Ramos Uria, the founding partner of La Sirena, and president of the Board of Directors of the Ramos Group, made it clear that there were never any negotiations with the Walmart multinational chain or with anybody else. Right away, Mercedes Ramos Fernandez, the executive president of the Ramos Group, said that it is possible that because of the organized growth that their business has had, there was cause for rumors, but in reality, they are not selling.

The business executive referred to the fact that they had the vision, at a time in which there was a lot of international movement of fusions and acquisitions, especially in Central America, of whether they wanted to be the leaders in the commercial sector of the Dominican Republic., and if so, they had a lot of work ahead and they had to do it fast, otherwise they would have left the market to others. "And we did this, and modestly speaking, I think that we did it pretty well and really it was then that we began to grow in an organized manner and standardized all of the stores, including the standardizing of the image of all of the stores and we began with a sustained growth in which every year we open several units," explained Ramos Fernandez.

For his part, Don Roman says: "We had some tentative visits, but we never had an offer from Walmart, and we are not closed to the idea that in the future something like this could happen."

"One can never be closed-minded, in the meantime we are going forward without looking around, we keep growing, and we are even entering commercial centers, now just not stores, but commercial centers and we are going to keep going forward, without stopping, because there are two roads, one goes down and the other goes up," he added.