Entrepreneurs of St Vincent and the Grenadines – Kelly John Glass

By Luke Browne Fri, May 30, 2014

Kelly John Glass was the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean in 1997. This was a remarkable achievement for a man who is a native of New Zealand and a Vincentian by naturalization. Kelly is the owner and Managing Director of one of the best infrastructure development companies in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and he has a reputation for competent project execution in the Caribbean. Mr. Glass was at one stage involved in the provision of cable television, internet and fixed-line telephone services in the OECS. He is a Digicel shareholder and built all the local towers for that company. Mr. Glass is also involved, albeit on a limited scale, in mobile advertising in places like South Africa and Brazil and his business interests almost span the entire globe.{{more}}

Kelly was born on March 24, 1957 in Christchurch, New Zealand. He attended boarding school as a teenager and went on to become a certified electrician with an Advanced Trade Certificate and a New Zealand Electrical Engineering Certificate in his early twenties. Kelly travelled the world as a professional rugby player when he was a young adult.

Mr. Glass came to St. Vincent in 1985 as a 28 year old Director of Operations for a Canadian company to work on the Cumberland Hydroelectric Project. This was after he worked in Libya for the same company (where he specialised in military installations and wiring MIG fighter planes between 1981 and 1983). Between 1983 and 1984, he worked for the Snowy Mountain Hydro Authority in Australia.

Kelly fell in love with SVG and decided to make it his home. This decision was no doubt influenced by the fact that he found a resourceful wife of Trinidadian origin in this country and recognised very good business prospects here.

The young Director of Operations impressed public and private sector executives with his remarkable efficiency on the Hydro Project. He was able to plant some 350 poles between Happy Hill in Layou and Troumaca in a mere 6 weeks. He earned the nickname “Rambo” because he was somewhat muscular and because of the way he commanded heavy duty equipment in forested areas. Kelly remained in St. Vincent and branched out on his own after the successful completion of the Project. He set up K-Electric in 1987 and then secured a strong local foothold because of the reputation he had established.

K-Electric was awarded numerous government contracts to do power, utilities and cable construction jobs all over mainland St. Vincent and in Canouan and Union Island. Its work was not, however, restricted to SVG nor to state agencies. Mr. Glass and his company quickly spread their wings to neighbouring islands such as St. Lucia and Barbados. K-Electric became a big contractor for Cable and Wireless and did work for that telecommunications giant in several islands including Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Mr. Glass jumped at the opportunity to get involved in the provision of cable television services when it arose in 1996. He established Karib Cable, through a holding company called Kelcom International Ltd., for these purposes. He built Karib Cable into a viable and profitable commercial enterprise that served several OECS states and Barbados before he sold it to Flow last year in a multi-million dollar deal at a time when Karib Cable was laying the basis for fiber optic cable transmission to Barbadian homes. Karib Cable was facing serious customer satisfaction problems in the Vincentian market when it was sold. Kelcom is involved in the provision of broadband internet services in St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and that holding company became, in 2009, before Karib Cable was sold, the region’s first true Triple Play service provider after it launched a fixed line telephone service in SVG.

Kelly Glass has been described as an “extraordinary buccaneer” with an aggressive business style who knows how to hammer out a good deal. Mr. Glass said the key thing in negotiations is for both parties to believe that they are getting “value for money.” He is opposed to protracted deliberations with investors and said that it is important to “wine them, dine them and close them.”

Kelly was so accustomed to the rough and tumble of the rugby field that he was able to cope quite well in what he described as a “ruthless and opportunistic” corporate world. Mr. Glass is just barely over five feet tall but he is not short on confidence. He went as far as to say, in a burst of wry humour, that his greatest challenge is “the height of the urinal.”

Mr. Glass does, however, does have some concerns about the general availability of credit for entrepreneurs. He said that the financial landscape “doesn’t look brilliant” and noted the dominance of Canadian banks which may help to keep everyone on “an even keel” but tend to be quite tough. He said that the main business challenge has to do with convincing financial institutions that projects are sustainable and mentioned that the strategic thing is to build an impressive development team.

Kelly encourages young entrepreneurs to work hard (and if things go wrong to work harder), stay focused and watch every red cent. He stressed the importance of personal and corporate discipline. Mr. Glass, who is in a very good position to make cross-country labour force comparisons because of the regional scope of his business operations, was full of praise for Vincentian workers. He said that Vincentians are as friendly as any other people he knows and that our work ethic is unlike that of our Caribbean counterparts who, according to him, often take sick days for holidays. He pointed out that he used Vincentians to teach Barbadians, Antiguans and St. Lucians how to make a cable system work. Our problem, Kelly thinks, is time-keeping and the slow pace of decision making in the private and public sectors. He seriously believes in decisiveness.

Kelly is currently working with an award-winning international developer, Jonathon Milne, who is based in Scotland, on the development of luxury Baie de Sucre Resorts in Bequia. He is also doing road development and other infrastructural work at Spring in the same Bequia for the state-owned National Properties Ltd. and has completed similar work for that statutory corporation at Crown Point and Friendship Heights. He applauds National Properties for its policy of developing non-productive land and hopes that it would continue for a long time.

Mr. Glass also recently bought the Sunsail property at Canash from National Properties Ltd is also in the process of developing a 50 room hotel and ancillary facilities in a phased manner, as well as fixed and floating docks with a mooring field. There would be a total of 300 berths which is the equivalent of a floating hotel with a capacity of 1,200 persons.

Mr. Glass said that SVG’s good governance record, decent infrastructure, reliable utility services and soon to be completed international airport, in addition to the four airports in the Grenadines, make it attractive for investors. He believes that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a land of opportunity and has a bright economic future. He mentioned that the presence of more offshore medical schools could lead to significant increases in our GDP and he would like the government to consider investing in retirement homes for foreign nationals from temperate countries who would prefer to spend their twilight years in the Caribbean sun. Mr. Glass would also like to see the reconstruction of the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean set at Wallilabou and has various other suggestions for the improvement of our tourist product.

Kelly is especially excited about the potential of the Grenadines. He sees a future for himself in the growing maritime business. He plans to build a main marina in Mayreau and a smaller one in Bequia. He is also considering a joint sand mining venture at Larikai Point on the north western coast of St. Vincent with French partners that would allow him to supply sand to the Trinidad and Tobago market on a large scale. Additionally, Mr. Glass believes that Calliaqua is a good place for a mall.

Kelly Glass has made a substantial and wide-ranging contribution to the national development of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in many areas. He has literally transformed our landscape in several instances, be it through the construction of the Windward Highway from Sandy Bay to Fancy, or through the extension of the Canouan airport runway, or through the closure and beautification of an unsightly and hazardous dump site in Arnos Vale and the creation of a landfill in Diamond, or by his work on some other project. Kelly, who is now in his mid-fifties and who has already notched up several business accolades, is not done yet.