Veira siblings want 75-year-old company to live on

Seventy-five years in a business is a long time, and sisters Audrey Veira-DeFreitas and Pamela Veira would love P H Veira & Company Ltd to live on for many more decades.

The sisters run the company (as governing directors), which was left to them by their father Phillip H Veira.

Established on June 25, 1942 in the form of a market shop in Kingstown, PH Veira & Company Ltd has, over the years, grown into a multimillion dollar enterprise which employs about 75 persons. 

“We would love to be around for a 100 more years, of course; it’s about continuity,” Audrey told SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday, while sitting at her desk upstairs the PH Veira Building on Bay Street.

Sitting on the other side of that desk, Pamela comments, “We love this business; we all had to work here on Saturdays when we were off from school; it’s about tradition.”

Pamela said after she finished school, she worked at CIBC, but the bank was closed on Saturdays, so she worked at her father’s business on those days. She described her father as innovative, and offered as proof his decision to reclaim land from the sea in 1960 and later delving into the flour manufacturing business.  

Pamela left St Vincent in 1973 and came back in November 1981 and has been working as a governing director of PH Veira & Company Ltd ever since.

Audrey says that a lot has changed since her father ran the business and they are proud of the company’s ability to retain good employees. She too lived abroad for a number of years before returning to St Vincent and the Grenadines. Audrey, like Pamela, is an astute businesswoman and is also the chairperson of the Eastern Caribbean Group of Companies (ECGC) Board of Directors.  

“I’m not really sure if there is a secret to keeping good workers; they enjoyed working with Daddy and they stayed after he passed on. We like having them and we don’t ask persons to leave if they are good employees,” explained Audrey, who noted that persons have worked with them into their 80s on their own volition.

The sisters told SEARCHLIGHT that the PH Veira & Company Ltd, which boasts a hardware department, supermarket, wholesale business and bakery, is enshrined in the Vincentian psyche and has over the years provided Vincentians with a unique shopping experience and continues to do so.

The company celebrates its 75th anniversary this Sunday, June 25.