One of the Caribbean’s most successful entrepreneurs, Sir Kyffin Simpson, says his success in business has been due to the goodness of God, tithing to his church and lucky timing in his ventures.

“I got to be where I am by the good Lord putting me in the right place and time with the right people,” SIr Kyffin told participants Nov. 17 at the second annual conference put on by the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation, taking place at the Lloyd Sandiford Centre in Barbados.  

A man as well known for his incredible success in business as he is for his reluctance to make speeches in public, Sir Kyffin sounded at times as if he were preaching a sermon to the faithful, and at other times like the passionate vehicle salesman that led him to establish successful auto dealerships all over the hemisphere, and lately in China. 

He said repeatedly that that his faith had led him on the path to success. But while he had always been religious, he said that it took a family tragedy - the loss of a child - for him to allow God to lead all of his career endeavours. 

“We had twins, and one died,” he told his audience, “and my wife and I started studying the word of God.” He said that in Malachi, the Lord speaks about paying tithes to the church, adding “We are nothing but robbers and thieves if we don’t tithe.”

(In the King James version, the passage to which Sir Kyffin referred runs as follows: “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings....Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”)

Said the influential businessman: “I really think that is why the Lord has blessed me. But you (also) have to get up and do.”

He added, “We are born to work. (God) didn’t put Adam and Eve to sit under the coconut tree to catch the breeze.”

Looking back on his earlier career, Sir Kyffin said he had always liked the auto business, and when energy prices went up in the 1970s “by four hundred percent,” he “scoured the world for economical vehicles” and got agencies for Skoda and Suzuki.

The latter were very small vehicles, he said, and his dealership had to encourage people, who were accustomed to seeing much larger vehicles on the streets and the farms, to give them a try.

But he said “some people got jealous and thought I was a supporter of the Opposition,” with the result that the government of the day put a heavy tax on the trucks, causing his dealership to focus more on other types of vehicles.

Putting on the hat of the vehicle salesman, Sir Kyffin then worked in a plug for the various farm and commercial vehicles offered by Simpson Motors, noting that with big companies trying to cut back internal costs due to the recession, opportunities were there for small business people to purchase equipment and offer such services to the bigger ones. 

But he warned that it would be hard to establish oneself in business at any time, and moreso in a recessionary period. “From the personal side there is an almighty God and a saviour and a personal redeemer, and you will really need to depend on Him after you have signed away your wife and mother,” quipped Sir Kyffin, adding it was “better to depend on him than yourself, because you will have hard times.”

Sir Kyffin said that the business community was not keeping up as good a dialogue with government and trade unions as it should be, noting that “that area needs a lot of goodwill, forgiveness and love.”

Acknowledging a disclosure made by BEF Chairman Peter Boos in his introduction, Sir Kyffin said he was indeed an investor in a BMW agency in China. He had learned from Citibank that it had taken over the agency for Beijing and the whole of northern China from an elderly man whose children were not interested in carrying it on and they were looking to divest it. “I picked up the company from them and our biggest BMW dealership in Beijing became the biggest in the world.” The agency had since added the Mini Cooper as well as Jaguar and Land Rover products to its lines, with the Jaguar dealership now the largest selling one in China.

Said Sir Kyffin: “I am no genius. I worked hard, the good Lord dropped the right products (in my lap) and timing for me was so important.”