The following story, first published on November 16, is being repeated with a corrected quote on the foreign exchange and money remittances services offered by Patrick Cha-Fong in 1982.

THIRTY years ago, when Patrick Cha-Fong began committing to paper the outlines of a business model that he wanted to pursue, the name Kingston Miami Trading Company (KMTC) aptly encapsulated exactly what the entrepreneur had in mind.

But as an important component of the corporate identity of this enterprise, the name has long outlived its usefulness; it has in fact become a bit of a misnomer.

First, there is the basic issue of geography. KMTC’s trading routes are not confined to the linear point-to-point journey across the Caribbean Sea that is implied by its name.

A more important matter is the very nature of the business. To his credit, Cha-Fong has spent the past 30 years developing a company that earns revenues doing an interesting mix of manufacturing, trading and marketing.

For those items that KMTC does not itself manufacture, it enters into partnership arrangements for others to produce to its specifications.

The company’s public image as a Miami-based distributor of ethnic drink and food products is influenced in part by the remarkable distributorship network that the businessman has succeeded in building over three decades of tireless work.

The truth is, KMTC’s access to the most coveted supermarket shelves in the south eastern United States has allowed the owners to develop a vertically integrated corporation. Through this network, the goods the firm manufactures and those that it enables via outsourcing arrangements in countries as far afield as Jamaica and China are assured relatively easy access, almost to the doorsteps of the American consumers.

Kingston Miami Trading Company boasts a list of 21 proprietary brands. It is these names that thousands of consumers reach for when they feel thirsty or hungry or need some spices to enhance their meals — whether they live in the USA, the Caribbean, South and Central America or as far away as the Middle East. They will have countless choices in varying combinations of products and sizes.

Cha-Fong has anchored his business around a very simple formula: he combines a least-cost approach to output, with product diversity.

“We aim for a broad market appeal,” he notes. “We employ less than fifty workers and outsource a lot of the jobs. We find this to be a much more economical approach to doing business.”

The KMTC principals identify the items they want to sell and scout countries to find partners who can make them; production agreements are then negotiated.

The partner’s end of the bargain is to deliver the goods on time and to quality specifications.

The key to this business model is the arrangement that the owners have been able to negotiate with America’s giant retailers. This company is what is called within the trade a director service vendor — the holy-grail in the distribution sector.

The supermarkets that carry the KMTC brands are, without doubt, the most instantly recognisable retail names within the American market and more specifically, along its south easterly corridor. They are: Walmart, Walgreens, Jetro Cash & Carry, Tropical Supermarkets, Publix, Save-A-Lot, Restaurant Depot, Presidente, Winn-Dixie, Kroger, Sedano’s, Bravo Supermarket.

“As a direct service delivery vendor, we are able to sell directly to the large chain supermarkets without having to go through any distributors,” explains the businessman. “This is important because without this privilege is how a lot of small companies can lose lots of money.”

Cha-Fong has never been a shy man, and neither has he ever been afraid to knock on doors. Blessed with a solution-oriented spirit, he takes particular pleasure in finding creative and sometimes even unconventional ways to get the job done.

Take the case of KTMC’s line of proprietary soft drinks. The entrepreneur “walks around with the formula in my head” — it is not on paper, he insists — but of course, converting arcane chemical formulas into tangible products is a totally different matter; this requires capital, and lots of it.

So Cha-Fong rents factory time at a large, modern drinks-making facility near Doral in Florida. It’s is a win-win proposition: from his perspective, the upshot is access to a multi-million-dollar production line for which he has not had to commit a level of capital outlay that would have been beyond his reach.

“I do my own mixing of my formula which remains a secret,” he explains. “The factory that produces my drinks is bigger and more modern than anything like it in Jamaica.”

Part of the genius of this arrangement is that the Jamaican-born businessman has no fixed overhead or legacy costs to worry about. He makes his drinks, pays the company, packs them together and goes about his business, taking them with him.

The soft drinks flavours are as varied as those made in Jamaica and include ginger beer, pineapple and cream soda. Cha-Fong claims that they taste better too, and that his formulation has a higher percentage of natural products.

“They love the ginger beer soft drink in Yemen,” he chimes. “We try to cover a wide market area. We just can’t stick to one area.”

The products are also distributed throughout the Caribbean, in Brazil, and Colombia — among other countries.

Several of the brand names are a nod to the countries with which KMTC does business, either as production centres, or as markets for its goods — names like Jamaican Country Style, Trinidad Best, Barbados Crop Over, Guyanaway, Lion of Judah and Chef Pearl Chung.

“Every 10 days we import a container of goods from Jamaica,” he says, citing this piece of statistic as evidence of just how robust business is. “We bring up sauces, bammy, jerk seasoning, tamarind ball — many products.”

Indeed, KMTC’s product categories are as comprehensive a representation of the region’s agro-processing industry as can be found in the warehouse of any respectable distributor. Just to name a few — they range from baked goods, beans, beverages, flavourings and essences, to coffee, tea, canned fruits, canned vegetables, jerk sauces and seasoning, and vegetarian meals.

It should come as no surprise that Kingston Miami Trading Company is not Cha-Fong’s first attempt at business, and that his entrepreneurism would have preceded his Miami experiences.

In fact, his exposure to business came very early, even if not under the ideal set of circumstances.

He began working at his aunt’s haberdashery in Kingston, sometime after the age of eight when his parents left him behind in Jamaica as they journeyed to New York in search of a better life.

Good at Mathematics, he earned a space at one of Jamaica’s most prestigious high schools — Campion College — where he became a star footballer. (He also played for Duhaney Park and Santos football clubs).

It did not take the school long to discover that the short, spare Chinese boy had no parents to represent him at PTA meetings, a discovery that set off a chain of events that, in retrospect, may have kept the schoolboy out of trouble.

According to him, in light of the revelation the school principal decided to become a surrogate parent and guided his social and moral development. He swears it kept him out of the trouble.

“I had a group of friends and they were plagued by trouble,” he says. “Some of them were even killed by the police, but I was kept out of trouble by the guiding hands of the principal.”

After high school, and without financial support, going to university was not an option.

Cha-Fong’s first real business opportunity as a young adult came in 1970. The 21-year-old successfully negotiated a contract with Scotiabank Jamaica to run its commissary at its headquarters in downtown Kingston.

The business was fine, he remembers, until 1973 when food shortages in Jamaica began to drive up prices. This made the operation unviable.

He found a more robust alternative that was able to better withstand the hyperinflation that started to sweep across the Jamaican economy in 1974, with the global gas price shock that followed the formation of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The supermarket, oddly called Grace Supermarket, was a 60,000 square foot behemoth on Molynes Road in Kingston that had significant promise but “was not doing well and was about to go out of business”.

It was owned by a couple who were close to GraceKennedy’s executive chairman Carlton Alexander and who, according to Cha-Fong, allowed them to use the Grace name.

The young entrepreneur paid $28,500 for the going concern, turned it around, and began leveraging the net-free cash that it started to generate, to snap up other businesses “for a good price…. I made plenty of money during the period”.

But the money apparently could not make up for the crime and general instability that had been unleashed across Jamaica, as the country’s two major political parties became locked in an internecine power struggle ahead of the 1980 elections.

In fact, for Cha-Fong, this episode became very personal: he was victimised, thrice over, at the hands of gunmen, and worse, bore witness to the fatal shooting of an uncle.

Fearing for his life, he and his wife Christine packed their bags and headed for Miami.

In Miami, there was a long adjustment period; he tried everything. He became certified in skills ranging from heavy duty trucking, food technology, ethnic food development, distribution, retail, meat cut selection, soft drink production, commercial real estate, and radio broadcasting.

But the most productive pursuit was ironically, a line of business in which he took advantage of the very political and economic turmoil he had left behind in Jamaica: foreign exchange trading.

“This was the key to our survival in the early days in Miami,” he confesses.

“In 1982, we started our business indowntown Miami as a Jamaican/Caribbean grocery store and offered a variety of services including foreign exchange and money remittances, serving as a one stop store for the cruise lines workers and the growing Caribbean community. There were many people of various nationalities including people from Jamaica, Cayman, Bahamas, Eastern Caribbean, Barbados to name a few. They came to our store to purchase hard to find products indigenous to their culture and also to change their foreign currency notes, British postal orders, foreign money orders, Canadian cheques, etc.”

Luckily though, he was well prepared for this venture — thanks to the many skills he gained during his overzealous drive for certification during his early years in America.

Still Cha-Fong shares a lot of the credit for the success of his enterprise with his family.

“This is a family business,” he stresses. “We all work together to make it successful.”

Christine (his wife) is the CEO, while two of their three children are in the business: second child Pricilla is vice-president, while the scion, Neil is general manager. The eldest, Wayne, works and lives in Philadelphia.

For the past few years, Cha-Fong has been deeply immersed in the civic life of the city where he resides, and where he has found entrepreneurial success.

He speaks with a sense of fulfilment of the prison work release programme in which he and his company have been involved since 2005.

Under this programme, KMTC provides jobs and mentorship to ex-convicts in order to help reduce Florida’s high recidivism rate.

He is convinced that the process helps the ex-cons to re-evaluate their goals, learn responsibility, discover alternatives to crime, and generally become better human beings.

“The general (crime relapse) rate is 68 per cent while the rate among the individuals we mentor is 22 per cent,” he says, with an obvious sense of satisfaction.

His civic involvement, as well as membership in industry-specific organisations are numerous.

His membership includes:

* The Washington, DC-based US Chamber of Commerce, since 2006;

* The New York-based National Association for the Speciality Food Trade, (NASFT) since 1990;

* The DC-based American Beverage Producers Association, since 1995;

* The DC-based National Soft Drink Association, since 2003; and

* South Florida Minority Supplier Diversity Council (SFMSDC), since 2007.

Among the awards he has copped:

* National Minority Exporter of the Year, DC 2004;

* Southeast Regional Minority Exporter of the Year, Georgia, 2004;

* Florida State Minority Exporter, 2004;

* Minority Business Development Agency, 2004; and

* Unique Coalition of Minority Business of South Dade, 2004.

Community service:

* Miami North Work Release Programme sponsor;

* Feeding South Florida donor;

* Sponsor of Don Daly’s annual medical mission to Jamaica; and

* Missionaries Of the Poor (soup kitchen).

Moses Jackson is founder of the Jamaica Observer Business Leader Award programme. He may be reached at moseshbsjackson@yahoo.com