- ContributedGo West's managing director, Carol Pessoa.
Al Edwards, Staff Reporter
POPULAR fashion clothing retailer Go West has opened yet another store at the Mall Plaza, Constant Spring Road, and is planning to open outlets in both Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas within the next two years.
Carol Pessoa opened her first store in St. Andrew's fashionable Manor Park Plaza in November 1994, and, on the back of that success, opened another store three years later in Kingston's Village Plaza. The launch of her store in the Mall Plaza last week saw the opening of three stores within six years. She now employs a total of 40 people.
Miss Pessoa who hails from Savanna-la-mar and who began her business career at the age of 24, has identified brand name fashion as a growth area in the retail industry. She became the agent for Guess jeans on discovering that the company's cut was more appropriate for the more rounded Jamaican woman. She has gone one step further, taking names like DKNY, Guess and Gant and attractively displaying these fashion lines aimed primarily at young people in varnished floored boutiques that lack nothing on those of London's King's Road or Chicago's Michigan Avenue.
Go West's marketing and merchandising manager, Kerry-Ann Paulwell told Sunday Business: "We have plans to open further stores in Jamaica, more particularly where the tourist attractions reside. Jamaicans take extreme pride in their appearance wherever they may be and names like DKNY, Guess and Gant are well known here.
"It now means that as the agents for these fashion houses in Jamaica people will no longer have to jump on a plane to Miami or New York to shop for them. At the moment Go West accounts for 65 per cent of market share of all brand name clothing bought in Jamaica and holds 80 per cent of the designer jean market."
