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Harry 'Rocky' Shields - the salesman who became an entrepreneur
Observer Reporter
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
At 19, Harry 'Rocky' Shields displayed such a gift for salesmanship that, ironically, to almost became a stumbling block on his way to being an entrepreneur.
For, he became the toast of the insurance community when, only after six months as an agent at the Manchester branch of Crown Life Insurance Company, he was promoted to deputy branch manager.
Shields was almost seduced by the prospect of corporate ascendancy, and the relatively secure economic base that beckoned.
But with an uncommon, single-mindedness of purpose, Shields, a year after joining the company, and at age 20, decided to set his ambitions much higher than that of a corporate executive, working for someone else.
"After a year I decided that this job was not for me," he told the Business Observer, as he recounted the journey to becoming one of Mandeville's most successful entrepreneurs, and a Business Leader Nominee for 2004. "I decided that I wanted to build and run my own company," he declared.
Now, at 56 years-old, Shields has no regrets. He is executive chairman of Shields Enterprises, a conglomeration that spans hardware and plant retail, restaurant, real estate, and farming - cattle, crop and fish.
Anchored in central Jamaica - Manchester and St Elizabeth - this group generated combined gross income of $340 million last year, invested $100 million in new plant, and employed 100 workers.
Millions more are now being invested in expanding the enterprise.
Not bad for a businessman who only five years ago, sold the business he had spent a generation and his entire adulthood building, and headed into retirement.
And a young retirement too, for this businessman was born in 1949 in Mile Gully, the third of five children for Harry Shields Snr and Elain Josephs-Shields.
His father, a haulage contractor for Jamaica Milk Products, as well as the Royal Mail, was a God-fearing man who Shields says built the Mile Gully Moravian church.
But Shields' real inspiration for entrepreneurism came from his maternal grandfather, Uriah Josephs, who in the 1940s had the enviable distinction of operating the first grocery wholesaler in Manchester.
"As a child I always liked business," he told the Business Observer. "I always admired my grandfather Uriah Josephs. I used to go to the grocery and help him. I used to hide and pocket the mouth organ from the shop."
Uriah Joseph died in the early 1960s, but evidently not without leaving an indelible mark on his grandson.
It is, therefore, not surprising that after graduating from Manchester High School in the late 1960s Shields would spend several months helping his father in the trucking business.
An adventurous youngster, he was wooed away from the family business at age 19 by his cousin, Raymond Josephs, the manager of Crown Life insurance company branch in Mandeville.
Josephs offered him a job as a sales rep at the insurer.
"I did it for one year and after six months at the company was appointed branch deputy manager in charge of 12 salesmen," he beamed. "They were all older than me and several were there for many, many years."
In only six months, Shields had sold enough policies to make it to the prestigious million-dollar-round-table, a raer feat that impressed the bosses in Kingston and won him their confidence.
"But after a year I decided that I did not like that business," he said. "I wanted to go into my own business."
So in 1971, at age 22, Shields quit his job and borrowed $196 from his mother, using the cash as down-payment on a $500 tipper truck. He secured the balance from Lorentide Finance Company, that operated at the time from the Manchester Shopping Centre.
"I started to drive it to deliver marl to people in Mile Gully," he recalls. The marl was purchased in Mandeville. Later, based on the demand, he expanded the product line to include lumber.
"It was then that I got the idea of opening a hardware store and again my mother helped me with an additional $200, which I used to buy 240 bags of cement from CA Spencer Distributor, located in Kingston," he says.
Shields stored the cement in his father's garage in Mile Gully, selling the first truck load within a month.
Within two years he was able to rent a shop from Dan Bromwell in Mile Gully to further develop business. He would buy goods from Leonard deCardova on a credit, and cement from CA Spencer.
In 1972 he married Judy Ann Reid, an Alcan employee who he had met in 1971.
What started off as a marriage, immediately became a significant business partnership with Reid quitting her job to join her husband in the business - she running the store and while he driving the truck.
Shields says that the business was an immediate success.
After a year and a few months, he was able to save enough money to buy a house and 3.5 acres of land in Mile Gully for $500, with his father later helping him to build a hardware store on the land.
At the time Rocky's brother Geoffrey - former youth choir conductor and owner of Shields & Shields in Kingston - became heavily involved in music.
The business, he remembers, was well supported by people in adjoining communities.
"Everybody in the surrounding area from Balaclava, to Kendal, big householders and contractors, supported us," he says. "We did about $200 per day in sales."
By the end of 1973 the husband and wife team owned three delivery trucks and employed over 10 people. "The business continued to grow at a fast pace," he says.
The rapid expansion over the next three years, and the net free cash generated by the hardware/trucking operation enabled Shields to expand into the real estate business - buying and selling land.
Shields Development Company was formed in 1976 to be the vehicle for the foray in real estate. One of the earliest deals he remembers is the acquisition of 4.5 acres of land in Manchester for $800.
As part of his strategy of vertical integration, this savvy businessman bought a small quarry at Lambert, Mile Gully in 1977 - from James Bryce, for which he paid $800. It was located just over a mile from the hardware store. (My Grandfather)
He then approached Barclays Bank which loaned him $1,500 to buy a one-yard bucket front-end loader, and a crusher.
Back then, Shields' largest supplier was Hammonds Hardware, one of the giants that serviced Mandeville and its environs.
Shields now began thinking that he too could make a grab for the lucrative Mandeville market. So he leased a piece of land from Glenton Mullings, secured funding from Rex James and Mitch Stephenson at Barclays Bank, erected a wooden structure, and Shields Enterprises Ltd, was in business, in Mandeville.
That was 1979. Importantly, it was the same year, he says, his father died.
Shields lists former mayor of Mandeville Cecil Charlton as among the many individuals who he said helped him to establish his business.
"He bought all his supplies from me. His was the biggest business we used to do."
So fast was the growth of Shields Enterprises, that when the lease from Mullings expired in 1983, the Shields never contemplated renewing it. It was time they thought, to move on their own property.
Shields then paid Josephs Development Co $350,000 for four acres of prime land on Caledonia Road in Mandeville. He later borrowed $1.5 million from Jamaica Mutual Life, to build Shields Enterprises complex, a general hardware store.
He continued to operate the branch at Mile Gully, and developed his real estate arm - Shields Development Company.
The next phase of growth came when Shields began importing hardware - through Mobile Hardware Ltd - selling to retailers throughout Jamaica, as well as to customers at his two stores. This operation was managed by his mother Elain and wife Judy.
In this integrated hardware and trucking operation,
the trucks would be loaded, and the driver and salesman travel to various retailers throughout Jamaica, making pre-ordered deliveries and selling products.
Yet, more diversification was in the making, with Shields generating enough cash by 1986 for Shields to pay down on a 600-acre farm in Holland, St Elizabeth.
Again NCB, his main banker, provided $1.6 million in credit for the development of the farm that had some 500 heads of Jamaica Red Pole cattle, several acres of peanuts, and later, some 40 acres of fish ponds.
Shields says that the real estate company was also active during this period, and included among its acquisition beach lots in Black River, St Elizabeth.
By 1990 the companies employed about 50 individuals.
In 1998 Shields sold half of his Caledonia Road land to Neal & Massy, the Trinidad firm that wanted to build a huge tyre depot and alignment stand in central Jamaica.
Then in 2000 Shields got an offer from Kingston-based hardware giant, Mainland International, which was trying to secure a foothold in central Jamaica.
He sold the 14,000 square-foot Caledonia Road flagship store and stock to Mainland, closed down the Mile Gully store, and decided to take a few months break from business with the possibility of retiring.
But his wife continued doing business at Island Hardware on the 2.5-acre Greenvale Road property that Shields had acquired in 1996.
"We discovered that this business was starting to show potential, and that the location was ideal," said Shields of Island Hardware.
As part of his desire to keep diversifying, Shields built a restaurant in 2002 on land he had bought back in 1996 in Black River. The Riverside Dock seafood restaurant hosts tourists from tour boats and the Black River safari operated by Charles Swaby. It is also a venue for bird-watching, weddings, and other events.
Last year this high-energy businessman began building a 10,000 square-foot warehouse to serve as a depot for Carib Cement. From this location, the cement manufacturer is able to supply all distributors in that section of the island. Shields leases the property to Carib Cement and manages the delivery for it.
During that same year he also started constructing a multi-million dollar, 18,000 square-foot warehouse and office complex, "to make it more comfortable for our customers and to supply a wider variety of hardware".
The new investment, he says, is being financed by RBTT and Scotiabank.
Shields now employs 100 workers, and has 10 delivery trucks that he uses to deliver his products islandwide.
His Pondside Farms Ltd now has cattle, mangoes and peanuts and now farms both shrimp and fish in 40 acres of ponds.
Shields says that his family plays an important part in the business with the Riverside Dock and his plant retail shop called Planters Paradise being run by Judy his wife, and business partner.
His son, Jason is manager for the yard and warehouse, while his daughter Roxanne just returned from abroad to help in the enterprise.
His other daughter Lisabeth Camille Shields graduated as a Barrister of Law from London University but is not involved in the business. His brother Paul Shields is transport manager.
As a result of Shields' involvement in the hardware industry he was last year made a life member of managing committee of Hardware Merchants Association.
He serves on the Mile Gully Secondary School board, and in February was elected president of Manchester Golf and Country Club.
Harry 'Rocky' Shields - the salesman who became an entrepreneur
Observer Reporter
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
At 19, Harry 'Rocky' Shields displayed such a gift for salesmanship that, ironically, to almost became a stumbling block on his way to being an entrepreneur.
For, he became the toast of the insurance community when, only after six months as an agent at the Manchester branch of Crown Life Insurance Company, he was promoted to deputy branch manager.
Shields was almost seduced by the prospect of corporate ascendancy, and the relatively secure economic base that beckoned.
But with an uncommon, single-mindedness of purpose, Shields, a year after joining the company, and at age 20, decided to set his ambitions much higher than that of a corporate executive, working for someone else.
"After a year I decided that this job was not for me," he told the Business Observer, as he recounted the journey to becoming one of Mandeville's most successful entrepreneurs, and a Business Leader Nominee for 2004. "I decided that I wanted to build and run my own company," he declared.
Now, at 56 years-old, Shields has no regrets. He is executive chairman of Shields Enterprises, a conglomeration that spans hardware and plant retail, restaurant, real estate, and farming - cattle, crop and fish.
Anchored in central Jamaica - Manchester and St Elizabeth - this group generated combined gross income of $340 million last year, invested $100 million in new plant, and employed 100 workers.
Millions more are now being invested in expanding the enterprise.
Not bad for a businessman who only five years ago, sold the business he had spent a generation and his entire adulthood building, and headed into retirement.
And a young retirement too, for this businessman was born in 1949 in Mile Gully, the third of five children for Harry Shields Snr and Elain Josephs-Shields.
His father, a haulage contractor for Jamaica Milk Products, as well as the Royal Mail, was a God-fearing man who Shields says built the Mile Gully Moravian church.
But Shields' real inspiration for entrepreneurism came from his maternal grandfather, Uriah Josephs, who in the 1940s had the enviable distinction of operating the first grocery wholesaler in Manchester.
"As a child I always liked business," he told the Business Observer. "I always admired my grandfather Uriah Josephs. I used to go to the grocery and help him. I used to hide and pocket the mouth organ from the shop."
Uriah Joseph died in the early 1960s, but evidently not without leaving an indelible mark on his grandson.
It is, therefore, not surprising that after graduating from Manchester High School in the late 1960s Shields would spend several months helping his father in the trucking business.
An adventurous youngster, he was wooed away from the family business at age 19 by his cousin, Raymond Josephs, the manager of Crown Life insurance company branch in Mandeville.
Josephs offered him a job as a sales rep at the insurer.
"I did it for one year and after six months at the company was appointed branch deputy manager in charge of 12 salesmen," he beamed. "They were all older than me and several were there for many, many years."
In only six months, Shields had sold enough policies to make it to the prestigious million-dollar-round-table, a raer feat that impressed the bosses in Kingston and won him their confidence.
"But after a year I decided that I did not like that business," he said. "I wanted to go into my own business."
So in 1971, at age 22, Shields quit his job and borrowed $196 from his mother, using the cash as down-payment on a $500 tipper truck. He secured the balance from Lorentide Finance Company, that operated at the time from the Manchester Shopping Centre.
"I started to drive it to deliver marl to people in Mile Gully," he recalls. The marl was purchased in Mandeville. Later, based on the demand, he expanded the product line to include lumber.
"It was then that I got the idea of opening a hardware store and again my mother helped me with an additional $200, which I used to buy 240 bags of cement from CA Spencer Distributor, located in Kingston," he says.
Shields stored the cement in his father's garage in Mile Gully, selling the first truck load within a month.
Within two years he was able to rent a shop from Dan Bromwell in Mile Gully to further develop business. He would buy goods from Leonard deCardova on a credit, and cement from CA Spencer.
In 1972 he married Judy Ann Reid, an Alcan employee who he had met in 1971.
What started off as a marriage, immediately became a significant business partnership with Reid quitting her job to join her husband in the business - she running the store and while he driving the truck.
Shields says that the business was an immediate success.
After a year and a few months, he was able to save enough money to buy a house and 3.5 acres of land in Mile Gully for $500, with his father later helping him to build a hardware store on the land.
At the time Rocky's brother Geoffrey - former youth choir conductor and owner of Shields & Shields in Kingston - became heavily involved in music.
The business, he remembers, was well supported by people in adjoining communities.
"Everybody in the surrounding area from Balaclava, to Kendal, big householders and contractors, supported us," he says. "We did about $200 per day in sales."
By the end of 1973 the husband and wife team owned three delivery trucks and employed over 10 people. "The business continued to grow at a fast pace," he says.
The rapid expansion over the next three years, and the net free cash generated by the hardware/trucking operation enabled Shields to expand into the real estate business - buying and selling land.
Shields Development Company was formed in 1976 to be the vehicle for the foray in real estate. One of the earliest deals he remembers is the acquisition of 4.5 acres of land in Manchester for $800.
As part of his strategy of vertical integration, this savvy businessman bought a small quarry at Lambert, Mile Gully in 1977 - from James Bryce, for which he paid $800. It was located just over a mile from the hardware store. (My Grandfather)
He then approached Barclays Bank which loaned him $1,500 to buy a one-yard bucket front-end loader, and a crusher.
Back then, Shields' largest supplier was Hammonds Hardware, one of the giants that serviced Mandeville and its environs.
Shields now began thinking that he too could make a grab for the lucrative Mandeville market. So he leased a piece of land from Glenton Mullings, secured funding from Rex James and Mitch Stephenson at Barclays Bank, erected a wooden structure, and Shields Enterprises Ltd, was in business, in Mandeville.
That was 1979. Importantly, it was the same year, he says, his father died.
Shields lists former mayor of Mandeville Cecil Charlton as among the many individuals who he said helped him to establish his business.
"He bought all his supplies from me. His was the biggest business we used to do."
So fast was the growth of Shields Enterprises, that when the lease from Mullings expired in 1983, the Shields never contemplated renewing it. It was time they thought, to move on their own property.
Shields then paid Josephs Development Co $350,000 for four acres of prime land on Caledonia Road in Mandeville. He later borrowed $1.5 million from Jamaica Mutual Life, to build Shields Enterprises complex, a general hardware store.
He continued to operate the branch at Mile Gully, and developed his real estate arm - Shields Development Company.
The next phase of growth came when Shields began importing hardware - through Mobile Hardware Ltd - selling to retailers throughout Jamaica, as well as to customers at his two stores. This operation was managed by his mother Elain and wife Judy.
In this integrated hardware and trucking operation,
the trucks would be loaded, and the driver and salesman travel to various retailers throughout Jamaica, making pre-ordered deliveries and selling products.
Yet, more diversification was in the making, with Shields generating enough cash by 1986 for Shields to pay down on a 600-acre farm in Holland, St Elizabeth.
Again NCB, his main banker, provided $1.6 million in credit for the development of the farm that had some 500 heads of Jamaica Red Pole cattle, several acres of peanuts, and later, some 40 acres of fish ponds.
Shields says that the real estate company was also active during this period, and included among its acquisition beach lots in Black River, St Elizabeth.
By 1990 the companies employed about 50 individuals.
In 1998 Shields sold half of his Caledonia Road land to Neal & Massy, the Trinidad firm that wanted to build a huge tyre depot and alignment stand in central Jamaica.
Then in 2000 Shields got an offer from Kingston-based hardware giant, Mainland International, which was trying to secure a foothold in central Jamaica.
He sold the 14,000 square-foot Caledonia Road flagship store and stock to Mainland, closed down the Mile Gully store, and decided to take a few months break from business with the possibility of retiring.
But his wife continued doing business at Island Hardware on the 2.5-acre Greenvale Road property that Shields had acquired in 1996.
"We discovered that this business was starting to show potential, and that the location was ideal," said Shields of Island Hardware.
As part of his desire to keep diversifying, Shields built a restaurant in 2002 on land he had bought back in 1996 in Black River. The Riverside Dock seafood restaurant hosts tourists from tour boats and the Black River safari operated by Charles Swaby. It is also a venue for bird-watching, weddings, and other events.
Last year this high-energy businessman began building a 10,000 square-foot warehouse to serve as a depot for Carib Cement. From this location, the cement manufacturer is able to supply all distributors in that section of the island. Shields leases the property to Carib Cement and manages the delivery for it.
During that same year he also started constructing a multi-million dollar, 18,000 square-foot warehouse and office complex, "to make it more comfortable for our customers and to supply a wider variety of hardware".
The new investment, he says, is being financed by RBTT and Scotiabank.
Shields now employs 100 workers, and has 10 delivery trucks that he uses to deliver his products islandwide.
His Pondside Farms Ltd now has cattle, mangoes and peanuts and now farms both shrimp and fish in 40 acres of ponds.
Shields says that his family plays an important part in the business with the Riverside Dock and his plant retail shop called Planters Paradise being run by Judy his wife, and business partner.
His son, Jason is manager for the yard and warehouse, while his daughter Roxanne just returned from abroad to help in the enterprise.
His other daughter Lisabeth Camille Shields graduated as a Barrister of Law from London University but is not involved in the business. His brother Paul Shields is transport manager.
As a result of Shields' involvement in the hardware industry he was last year made a life member of managing committee of Hardware Merchants Association.
He serves on the Mile Gully Secondary School board, and in February was elected president of Manchester Golf and Country Club.
Harry 'Rocky' Shields - the salesman who became an entrepreneur