The company has just attained ‘adulthood’, but the rapidly growing Supreme Ventures Ltd has big people plans as it looks ahead to far more profitable years of existence.

A week and a half ago the company marked its coming of age with a reception at the Upper St Andrew home of Ian Levy, one of its founders. But even before that, the organisation’s first woman president and chief executive was hinting that Santa’s bag could not be compared with the goodies that the gaming group was prepared to spring on its constituents – the supportive and devoted public.

Ann Dawn Young-Sang told the Jamaica Observer during a sit down session enhanced by sips of Blue Mountain Coffee that there was much more to come. The only thing is that she was not yet ready to talk about them in specific terms.

“We are getting better. Exciting times are ahead,” Young-Sang insisted. “There’s a lot to do but there are so many opportunities and we have been forging the path in terms of doing our business plans, doing our strategic plans, getting the team to understand that we are changing our direction and focus somewhat on strengthening the foundation that we have.

“We have been doing a lot of changes in the 18 months that I have been here. The results have been paying off, so it means that we are moving in the right direction. We are only just getting started. You will also see that within the first 18-year period we have achieved quite a bit. We have now entered the digital world by offering mobile for both horse racing and the lotteries, we have fine-tuned our gaming product in terms of growing the lottery aspect; we have spent a lot of technological investment. I believe that once you have a strong technological background it gives you flexibility to branch off and do quite a bit. So you embrace it, I don’t believe in running away from it.

“I believe in embracing it, understanding it and knowing how to use it to grow even further and where I see Supreme’s future, it plays a key role for what we want to do. That’s part of the transition that we are doing. I believe in the customer. Any great business needs to understand your customer and know what makes them tick, because from there you are able to build greater products and services by being able to fine-tune and understand that and I think that’s one of the edges that Supreme has in terms of understanding their customer and building that relationship,” the career accountant stated.

One of Jamaica’s profitable companies, Supreme Ventures Ltd enters a phase in which consumer awareness is almost at its peak, and improved technology has made it even easier for those who swear by the gaming industry, to further understand the countless possibilities that go with it.

Young-Sang remains upbeat that what the organisation has in store for the public will satisfy their collective appetite and turn the organisation into an even more formidable economic force.

“I can’t get into details regarding the specifics of our plans for the future. But the mere fact that we have entered mobile and the digital world we will be going more into that arena to a level and heights not done before. We are moving with aggression. We are making sure that we understand the consumer and our products and services will get better,” she said in respect of the three-to-five-year development plan for which she is preparing to hold a strategic review with her management team soon.

“We are coming up with entertainment packages, because we see it as entertaining the people with our products. That’s why we have so many different promotions and they are so colourful.

“None of us dreamt that the company would have evolved to the level that it has,” said the woman who joined Supreme Ventures’ related company, GTech Ltd two months after Supreme started its operations and who became president and CEO in October 2017.

“There was a dream in terms of where we want to take it. It really is a dream come true. The main reason I took the job was that I felt there was an untapped opportunity. There is far more that we can do. Supreme is not just a gaming company. Its one of the best companies and corporations out there and we aim to keep it like that to do things never before thought of doing.

“We are going to be different, we are going to stand out. We were a force to be reckoned with in the past 18 years and we are going to be a force to be reckoned with in years to come.

“When Supreme started the then founders, Paul Hoo, Peter Stewart, Ian Levy, the Mutays, it was borne out of understanding the Jamaican psyche … because it emerged from the Drop Pan game. We had issues during the early days and we had a lot of sceptics because many were saying there is no way the Jamaican market, which at the time was $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion, that it could grow beyond $2.5 billion. Within a year we did it. When we started with two products, based on the experience we had with our different partners, we did a lot of research and study to come up with the different games to be able to adjust our products. At the time Cash Pot was drawn once or twice per day and then we moved it up to three times by 2005. It’s now six times per day,” she went on.

Crediting the visionaries who started the company, Paul Hoo in particular, Young-Sang put the growth down to the care that they took to mould those who were charged to do the tough work in a company that has 10 lottery games, is into sports betting, has acquired Caymanas Park, the home of horse racing in Jamaica, and has installed countless gaming lounges across the Jamaican landscape.

As for trading of its shares on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, Young-Sang is optimistic that it will continue to be in demand, and maybe later, more shares can be put to the public, as long as the board of directors, headed by the newly-appointed and highly respected financial specialist Gary Peart, sees the need to go that route for the publicly-listed company.

Describing the association between Peart and herself as combining to make “a great team”, Young-Sang said that the duo was committed to taking Supreme Ventures to the next level.

“Gary and I both move fast, we are aggressive and hungry. We have a good energy. The stock is performing because of the value and output. We will have to discuss the possibility of another public offer again. We are very conscious of what the stock is doing and people don’t want to let go of their shares, because of the value that it brings. It’s a high value stock.”

She said that the company’s management was now working on broadening staff engagement, as according to her, “any organisation you work for you must recognise that change will occur. Change is a part of everyday life. The minute that you are resistant to change it will break you. If you don’t change in life you are going to have a problem because nothing in life stays the same. I believe in change. I like out of the box thinking. I believe in a mix of quirk personality type that’s not afraid to challenge the status quo. I don’t believe in a box because you are going to limit yourself. We are trying to build an organisation that is flexible and nimble,” stated the Supreme honcho.