SUCCESS STORY
Morgan’s Group of Companies
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The story of the Morgan’s Group of Companies, is a perfect example of a company which was able to rise to fame by raising its sails and catching the wind at the opportune time. More than just luck, the Morgan’s Group growth over the years is a tale of a successful business linkages between the hospitality sector and the manufacturing sector, through the supply of high quality products to high end customers with high tastes.
As a supplier of state-of-the-art mattresses, Morgan’s Group has distinguished itself by landing successful contracts with leading companies including some of Jamaica’s most exclusive resorts – Bahia Principe, Half Moon Hotel, Palmyra Resort & Spa. But it could not have achieved it without Jamaica Trade and Invest’s linkages programme and the freedom this initiative gives to companies to discover new, untapped opportunities to group up with companies and benefit from each other’s goods or services. Morgan’s Group set off with sails taut after attending a 1999 linkages expo where investors from the RIU Hotels & Resorts discovered their luxurious bedding products. At the end of the day, Morgan’s Group won a $10 million contract to supply beds to the RIU hotels in Jamaica, furnishing 396 rooms of this international luxury hotel chain which, although perfectly able to source bedding products, discovered the remarkable quality of Morgan’s bedding products made right here in Jamaica. "Jamaica Trade and Invest must be commended for attracting this sizable investment to Jamaica and more importantly encouraging them to buy locally," says Marketing Director of the Morgans Group, Aswad Morgan.
Through many other linkages activities held over the years, Morgan’s Group was able to land many more contracts. In 2006, it won a contract to supply five-star resort, Bahia Principe, with mattresses, foam, box foundations, pillows, and mattress protectors for 734 of its rooms. Subsequently, Morgan’s Group won acclaim for its Half Moon Memories, a top-of-the-line sleep system supplied to Half Moon Hotel, Rose Hall, Montego Bay. It was also able to form successful linkages with the Palmyra Resort & Spa as a mattress supplier for the entire hotel in late 2008.
Morgan pointed out, “We not only won contracts, but we delivered before time on all of the above with products of the highest quality. JTI, with its linkages programme, set the stage, and we just delivered.”
Morgan’s Group is a family-owned conglomeration of recognized bedding manufacturing companies: Ther-A-Pedic Caribbean Ltd., Polyflex Foam Ltd., Morgans Industries, and Jumbolon Jamaica Ltd. Efficiently managed by highly skilled core personnel, the company plows down costs by generating all its raw materials and manufacturing all its products itself. The company now owns and occupies more than 100 000 square feet of factory and office space and Aswad Morgan estimates its asset value at in excess of JA$1 billion with sales of close to JA$400 billion. He has projected sales to reach $1 billion by 2012.
Jamaica Trade and Invest, which is committed to encouraging increased investment by foreign investors, is also deeply interested in facilitating increased local direct investments and the deepening of the absorptive capacity of Jamaican firms (and by extension the economy) through linkages such as the Morgan’s Group-RIU partnership.
Like Morgan’s Group, entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), potential investors and other stakeholders can use JTI’s linkages programmes to their advantage. Opportunities Jamaica ’09, the next best on the calendar, will focus on promoting inter-sector linkages with the hospitality sector. At this year’s staging of Opportunities Jamaica, the island’s largest business linkages forum, SMEs in the hotel and tourism industry will meet to boost their bottom-line through value-added information sharing, business networking, and demand based business matchmaking. The event will offer an intense day of business meetings and networking among buyers from Jamaica’s North Coast hotels and restaurants and prospective suppliers. SMEs are encouraged to take advantage of opportunities as potential suppliers of raw materials, inputs and/or specialized goods and services through backward linkages such as the one forged by Morgan’s Group with the above leading players. Success like his, Morgan guarantees, requires skill in identifying and optimizing on gaps in the supply value chains of businesses in the tourism sector which may present themselves as investment/business opportunities for local entrepreneurs.
