THE fire which destroyed Value City’s Suva branch was a speed bump to the business as managing director Vera Chute expects to open an outlet in the next three months.
According to her their estimated cost of loss was $600,000 with fittings and stock as well as machines accounted for.
She said the 12 staff members who worked at the branch had been reallocated into other branches and their warehouse in order to prevent them from losing their jobs.
“In terms of replacement we are just taking it a bit slow we like to start as soon as but we have things to clear up.
“We have insurance matters to attend to and hopefully within the next three months we should have a store replaced in the Suva city area.
“We consider it a speed bump on our road, we still have 15 other branches in operation, this is a good time to stop and rethink, refocus, re-plan and renew our strategies and adding to that is COVID-19 and the new norms that would come in so we are expecting a lot of changes in terms of trading.”
She said the main challenge for the business during the pandemic was when the lockdowns had resulted in the branches in Suva and Lautoka closed for the duration.
“But aside from that we had reduced hours for staff to be able to reduce our cost,” she said.
She said they had three disasters in three months but they were resilient and re-planned their strategies.
“Like everyone else there is a lot of uncertainty we have to see in the next, three to six, 12 months what’s happening but at the moment we are not planning to lay off anyone.
“We employ close to 297 and all of them are still in employment,” added Ms Chute.
