OVER 50 years ago, after their business burnt to the ground, Bobby and Angela Chang opened a shop that is today Jamaica’s leading pharmacy chain, Fontana Pharmacy.

Bobby Chang, born to a Chinese man and Jamaican woman, learned the art of entrepreneurship at a very young age and even though one of his first shops was burnt out, his resilience, along with that of his wife, never wavered.

Chang got inspiration for the name of his business through a fountain that was located nearby and his sixth child, Anne, who was born during that time. He used part of the word ‘fountain’ and played on his daughter’s name to get ‘Fontana’. His daughter is now the chief executive officer of the establishment.

She along with her siblings now describe the devastating event as nothing short of a blessing in disguise, noting that the impact of their business now transcends the boundaries of Jamaica into international territory.

While recalling the early days of the company, the CEO noted that pharmacy business wasn’t the only entrepreneurial pursuit her parents dabbled in, but she said it proved to be the most lucrative at the time.

“They had many different businesses and I think they just saw that there was an opportunity for a pharmacy in Mandeville and I guess they figured they had already been in retail, so it was just an opportunity they saw that existed,” she explained.

“They originally had a pharmacy and a clothing store, it was a new kind of concept with the whole idea of a mall. They quickly realised that the pharmacy was outperforming the clothing store so they actually switched the locations around and kept expanding the pharmacy,” she continued.

She said over the last five decades Fontana has strived to stay ahead of the market in every way. Some of that she attributed to the foreign upbringing she and her siblings benefited from. But she also noted that the principle of always staying ahead of the game was passed down from her parents to their children who now run the business together.

“I’ve always said that my parents were kind of ahead of their time, they brought a lot of trends here that didn’t catch up to them for a while,” she added.

“If you look at us compared to a traditional pharmacy back then, I think they looked a lot to what was happening abroad to see what would work and succeed in Jamaica. They brought a lot of new things that didn’t catch on immediately. We’ve always brought goods into Jamaica, we’ve never relied only on the distributors here and I think that has always been our success even from those times,” Chang stated, highlighting the practices she viewed as key differentiators for Fontana.

Today, the company, which started as a small family business in Christiana, Manchester, has expanded with six branches across Jamaica and another branch slated to open in Portmore in 2023.

Fontana currently hires about 420 employees with its total assets amounting to $4.55 billion at last check.

But it hasn’t been a bed of rose, Chang told the Jamaica Observer.

“The biggest challenge has been moving from a small business where the employees are used to seeing you every single day to a big company. There’s going public as well, so there’s a lot that has changed in that way,” said Chang.

She said, “We’ve brought in more people from outside than we typically used to, we used to just promote inside but eventually we realised as we continued to grow we needed skill sets that we don’t always have here, although we’ve always tried to develop a lot of it.”

“As you keep growing you obviously have to have a lot more checks and balances as well as processes. So you’ve gone from doing whatever you want to putting in great security and plans offices (SPO) to moving inventory around…to avoid theft and all of those other stuff,” the CEO explained.

But the challenges have not hindered Fontana’s growth.

“It’s really our firm belief now that even though we’re national, there’s a lot of Jamaica that’s uncovered. We believe there’s a lot of room for growth in the Jamaican market as well as in the Caribbean. We don’t think that Portmore will be our last thing in Jamaica, there’s still a lot more places that we could go that will not cannibalise, I think it will only add.”

Fontana’s six branches are currently located at Manchester Shopping Centre in Mandeville, Manchester; East King’s House Road (Barbican) in St Andrew; West King’s House Road (Waterloo Square) in St Andrew; Fairview Shopping Centre in Montego Bay, St James; Eight Rivers Town Centre in Ocho Rios, St Ann; and Beckford Plaza in Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland.

“When we opened Waterloo we ourselves anticipated a certain drop in Barbican which we didn’t end up seeing that at all…we still think there’s even more room in Kingston because Kingston is very convenience driven, they don’t want to drive too far to go to Fontana and they would go more often if was closer to them,” said Chang.

With that said, she disclosed, “We have two other developments, I can’t say exactly where right now but they are very serious and most likely will happen. We are also looking to some models in North America. We do have a couple of things that we are trying to do to enhance the customer’s experience but we’re kinda in trial mode right now.”

She added, “We’re always looking for complementary areas to grow in and we have added as we’ve gone along and a lot of times it’s our customers and employees that really bring us into new things to add. In terms of new businesses, we’re also always very mindful of what our core strengths are and that’s one of the reasons we have a lot of tenants in our locations. It’s a good way for us to increase the offering to the customer but have someone who’s really the expert in that area run it.”

In the meantime, the company continues to work on new ways to cut cost and expand nationally. For example, instead of buying solely from Panama and North America, Chang said Fontana now goes directly to China which has positively impacted the companies bottom line.

“We started buying from China a number of years ago and that’s actually changed the dynamic of what we carry at the stores a lot. It’s cheaper and we can control it a lot more. It was unfortunate during the coronavirus pandemic with the freight but it afforded us to buy things cheaper than we would have bought it in North America. I’m not even talking about at a distributor level here because a lot of that stuff they don’t carry. A lot of the stuff we are bringing in, nobody carries it here and it’s way cheaper than what we were buying before, “she said.

Come 2023 Fontana will celebrate its emerald anniversary, marking 55 years of operations in Jamaica. Chang said she is currently in planning mode for the celebrations.