Voisins Department Store is one of Jersey’s most iconic shop fronts and recognisable brands. Like many other businesses, Voisins was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and resulting shutdown as the government attempted to stem the spread of the infection among the population. Chairman Gerald Voisin tells Rosie Allsopp how he and his team dealt with the shock and uncertainty
A natural planner
Gerald Voisin is a man who’s unafraid to roll up his sleeves and do what’s necessary in a crisis. As he tells me the story of how he and more than 140 staff across the store coped with the unfolding situation back in March, he cheerfully admits that he personally took on the role of making sure that customers received the goods they’d bought before the lockdown deadline took effect.
“I delivered a lot of customer orders on the Monday and that’s because we were told that everybody had to stay at home. So we didn’t know if we were supposed to employ people to deliver purchases or not. So I thought ‘well, I’ll do it’ because if I get arrested it’s probably better than having an employee get arrested,” he says with a smile.
“I could see the writing on the wall”
During our conversation I get a clear sense of a man who plans for every eventuality, who was watching the situation unfold with a determination to take matters into his own hands to ensure the survival of the business and look after the wellbeing of his employees.
The plan was hatched at Voisins to close up before the government ordered businesses to do so, he says.
“We started to see that sales were being hit by the pandemic and peoples’ fears of it quite early in March. We could see the writing on the wall so we took the decision to close from 30th March.
“What we didn’t want to do is have a panic shutdown and find that we couldn’t open tomorrow morning and we hadn’t made any plans for that. So we decided with our staff, I made an announcement on the Thursday or Friday that we were going to close on Monday 30th. Trade was so bad there was no point in us staying open. We were all standing around looking at each other.”
Battening down the hatches
It was a decision that worked well, he says. “It was good because we had several days to organise it. In Voisins Kitchen, which is our café/restaurant, we were able to clear all of our perishable goods, give them away to customers, give milk away to staff. By the time the announcement came on the Sunday we were pretty well prepared for it.”
For a man who is used to planning and preparing months ahead, it was difficult to cope with the uncertainty of the situation.
“This was one of the big issues. We got closed down on the 30th and we didn’t know when we would be able to reopen again. That was the really difficult part and it’s the same for any business.”
Ahead of the announcement of the States payroll co-funding scheme, Voisins made the commitment to continue paying staff.
“We made the decision from very early on because we appreciate that they’ve got their rent to pay to their landlords and they’ve got to eat. I was very pleased that very late in March or early April the States launched the co-funding scheme which was great because it meant that we didn’t have to make anybody redundant at that time.”
While the States may have come in for criticism of its handling of the pandemic, Gerald says they did well in that respect.
“It would have been nice to have known about it a week or so earlier. We did draw up plans to reduce our staff because we didn’t know how long we were going to be in that situation for. So it was a prudent thing to batten down the hatches and do it quickly, but the co-funding came through.”
He says they’ve managed ‘more or less’ to keep everybody’s jobs but admits Voisins has undergone a cost-cutting exercise.
“The trouble is that we don’t expect sales to go back to where they were. We don’t have any tourism. Well, we actually have more tourism than I thought we would have at this moment, but our sales are consistently down on last year and so it means that we have to tailor our cloth to meet our ends.
“We set ourselves a savings target and we are pretty much there. There are vacancies that we are not filling. There are some people that are going to leave the business and there are some people whose hours are being cut as well. But the number in total is very small.”
Managing in the ‘new normal’
How did he cope, not just as the head of the organisation, but as a human, as the weeks of shutdown turned to months with no prospect of getting back to normal?
“I did a bit of soul searching,” he says.
‘There was the uncertainty of not knowing how long it was going to go on for and having to deal with the constant missives coming out of the States and trying to fight back against those.”
His sympathy though, is for the people who are still in limbo, not knowing if or when they’ll be able to reopen their businesses.
“It must be awful. You have probably spent years building up a business and you see it just wasting away in front of you. Everybody has commitments, either to the landlord or the bank and all of a sudden there’s no cash coming in and it just crumbles around you. It must be really a terrible situation.
“As far as Voisins is concerned, we have had a strong balance sheet for some years so we are fortunate in that respect. So I knew we’d survive a few months and also our bank are very supportive.
“But for the smaller guys, I really feel for them. I don’t really think I’ve seen enough coverage of the stress this is putting on businesses. We talk about the mental health of people who have to work from home but in some respects they are lucky that they have some work to do. What about the mental health of all the business owners who are told they’ve got to close their business and yet they have all these commitments. It must be very hard.”
Join us this Friday for the second part of our interview with Gerald Voisin.
