Helping without being a hero

There are two kinds of conversations: those that converge to a natural end and those that expand into all sorts of subjects and experiences. A conversation with Karim Sumar, National Merchandise Manager at Caltex Australia, is of the latter kind.

Karim was born in Tanzania and immigrated to Australia with his parents and younger sister from Kenya in the early 1980's. He was only 18 years old and had just finished high school.

"One of my first jobs when still at school in Kenya was to work in an ice cream shop where I was hand-churning ice cream after school. All the ice cream was made manually in Africa in those days."

"It was very difficult for my family when we first arrived in Australia. My sister was still at school. My parents, who were then middle aged with language difficulties, had problems finding work and struggled to fit in and make a living in our new country. After two weeks I managed to find a job pushing supermarket trolleys at a Coles supermarket in Epping, in Sydney's North West. With me as main bread winner, these were difficult times for the family, but nowhere near as hard as what we had left in Africa."

"After three weeks of pushing trolleys, the store manager came and told me: 'You are the first person to stay in the job pushing trolleys up that ramp. Everyone else has quit.' He offered me a Coles Traineeship."

Traineeship with Coles

After initial training, Karim had to leave the family to take a position as grocery manager at a Coles supermarket in Orange in the central west of NSW. That was sixth months after starting with Coles and by that time his parents had managed to find work. He moved into various roles including Assistant Manager, Fresh Foods Manager and Store Manager before eventually undertaking several roles at the State office including a short stint in Melbourne, which he says he didn't enjoy. Karim's last role involved new store openings.

By this time Karim had met and married his wife Ambreen and there was talk of him settling down and finding a job with more regular hours.

"When I started in supermarkets, it was weekday trading plus Thursday evenings and a half day on Saturday. But the industry had started moving to weekend and then to twenty-four hour trading. So I looked for something with more regular hours and, after eleven years, I took a job with a music chain.

"The music industry wasn't my cup of tea at all. There was a move to expand the business into book retailing without any proper retail structure. No scanning, no systems, no anything. It was an organisation that seemed to be devoted more to partying than anything else. I stayed on for twelve months before joining Ampol, as a merchandise space analyst.

From fuel to convenience

"Ampol had decided that the future was in merchandise and the company wanted to build the non fuel side of the business. I was one of the first people they had recruited who did not come from a fuel background and thought 'Guys, you're not ready for it'.

"Three months into the job, Ampol had a major restructure to move its focus from fuel to convenience. I moved into a newly formed franchisee support group to focus on Merchandise. Moving from a supermarket environment into convenience is a more difficult transition that many people imagine and it's easy to see why a lot of grocery people have not succeeded.

"I had come from what I regarded as Australia's best grocery chain where, in it's hey days hard work, flexibility and engagement with customers and staff were everything. It was a culture shock moving to an environment where we had guys in greasy overalls trying to sell non fuel related products like pies and snacks.

"These were the early days of franchising and the challenge was to try to communicate the vision to the franchisees as well as to the customers. When I started in the industry, the profit split between fuel and shop was about 75-25. Now it's the other way around. This transition has been a long hard road."

When Ampol shares were bought out by Caltex Australia in the late 1990's, Karim was appointed Merchandise Development Manager. He quickly became heavily involved in category management and was seconded to Chevron in the USA in 2002 to roll out Category Management and Global Supplier management.

"It wasn't easy, uprooting my wife and two young boys. An international stint was something I had always wanted to do. As it turned out, I spent more time in airplanes than I did in the USA and it was particularly difficult for my family. Chevron had a merchandise team within their procurement business, which was quite unusual at the time.

"Traditionally, merchandise and procurement are at loggerheads, with the one trying to expand the product range and the other trying to contract it. It was a useful model which we took to the Caltex-badged Chevron stores in SE Asia. Language was a problem there, but it is a time I remember as being enormous fun.

"Lynne Davis, then National Merchandise Manager, was a great mentor for me at Caltex. She always encouraged me and believed in me. It was she who suggested I take the job in the USA which, as it turned out, was one of the best things I've done in my career. When Lynne took ill in July 2004, I stood in for her while she recovered. By January 2005 her health had deteriorated and I took over her role full time. It was very, very hard to fill her shoes and it took a good six months before I settled in.

A great team at Star Mart

"We now have a great team and are continuing to develop the business, which operates predominantly under the Star Mart brand and has grown to over $1 billion in non fuel sales. We've overseen a lot of investment in front-of-store over the past five years, particularly in bakery and coffee. The focus at Caltex on convenience retailing has grown substantially.

"Nationally, we are the No 1 Convenience store network in the market place. We have got all our company owned and franchisee retailers to Step Up, focus on the customer and drive compliance through our All Stars program."

Karim is also an active member of a number of industry groups and has been a Board member of the Australasian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) for the past several years. He and his wife Ambreen now have three boys aged 5, 13 and 15 and he says his family is always his first priority. After that comes his work at Caltex and his extensive community work with the AKDN, which is the Aga Khan Development Network.

"I have been working as a volunteer with the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) for over twenty years. The AKDN is a group of development agencies with mandates that include the environment, health, education, architecture, culture, microfinance, rural development, disaster reduction, promotion of private-sector enterprise and the revitalisation of historic cities. AKDN agencies conduct their programs without regard to faith, origin or gender.

"Active primarily the poorest parts of Asia and Africa, the AKDN is dedicated to improving living conditions, quality of life and opportunities for the poor. The AKDN, under the leadership and guidance of His Highness the Aga Khan, enables the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims to express the social conscience of Islam through institutional means. Readers can learn more about the AKDN at www.akdn.org. AKDN is about helping people without becoming their hero.

"My passion in life are my family, engaging with other people and assisting where I can to improve quality of life for the under privileged. Being a Muslim often brings its challenges as many people say. Fortunately for me, my religious beliefs have never been an issue.

Karim says that there are still many challenges in convenience.

"Today's convenience customer is super-critical. Channel blurring has made other businesses like corner stores, newsagents and supermarkets real contenders in the convenience channel. We need to understand customers and work with them. We need to always present the right stock at the right time. We have less than two minutes to engage the customer in-store. Out of stocks is still an issue. The customer will only give you one - to at best two -chances. We need an industry solution to supply chain to compete with the other channels.

"There's still a long way to go with the convenience business."