Dudley Stokes, executive chairman of Aeromar Logistics. - File

Faced with a 30 per cent fall off in businesses since last year, Aeromar Logistics (AmLog), a third party logistics company, has launched a US$30,000 interactive website, which the company will be using as a marketing tool to leverage business.

"The website is primarily a marketing tool and its secondary function is a customer service tool," said executive chairman Dudley Stokes.

"So, we do hope that it will expose us to more people here and to overseas," he told the Financial Gleaner.

As to how much business he can generate through the site, Stokes - a founder of the Jamaica Bobsleigh team and four-time Olympian - is not sure.

"No, we don't have any projections that are based solely on having the website, but we have our internal targets of where we want to go in expanding the business but right now all of that is up in the air given the present economic conditions and the uncertainty," he said.

CAUTERISING THE LOSS

Stokes pointed out that since last year, he has seen a 30 per cent fall off in business. Now he hopes the website which he unveiled February 18 in Kingston can help cauterise the loss of business.

"We are working from the point of view that we have to expand the number of people that we are interfaced with even to maintain our current level of business," he said.

"What we do know now, is that every client that we have now is going to have a fall off in business and that our only way to maintain our level of business is to increase our clientele."

AmLog has 100 customers spread across the customs brokering industry, hotel industry, beverage industry and manufacturing sector. Stokes said his company does about 6,000 transactions each year, in addition to other business across the sectors his company services.

How business works

Explaining how his business works, Stokes said it is a company that moves things around and brings two parties together to trade.

"What we do as a third party is that we hire the customers, we hire the supplier and we don't have the hard asset. We stay outside and put the two people together in a mix that makes it worth the while of the end customer," he said.

"So, instead of the end customer - finding out where the shipment is, thinking of how to import, clear it through customs; we do all of that. We are the party who makes the whole think work for the customer," he said.

REDUCED TRACKING COST

Tara Bradshaw, executive assistant to the chief executive officer at AmLog said the interactive website could help reduce AmLog customers' tracking costs by one third.

"Instead of having to go through a third party for example, if they wanted an update on their shipment, they would have to call somebody from Aeromar Logistics, they would have to then check and call them back, whereas with the website, the information in the database is updated more than once a day, maybe two to three times a day as our executive accountants put it into the system."

Bradshaw said that all the customer would need is a username and password, to log into the system and track the shipment in real time.

"So, for example, if the vessel has left but it is delayed and there is something happening why we can't reach in the allotted time, that would be updated to the system and that would be at the customer's figure tips," she said.

And: "It is not that it would impact our service rates or anything."

A family business, Aeromar was founded by Denise Stokes 20 years ago, and initially started out offering customs brokering services to importers in Kingston. Aeromar now has two offices, in Kingston and Montego Bay, with a staff complement of 45.

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com