How Pedro Juan Rosaly Engineered the Remarkable Recovery of Islandwide Express
Pedro Juan Rosaly took over a company facing closure in 1988, steered it through a 1996 leveraged buyout and built Islandwide Group into a logistics operator that delivers more than 3.5 million packages a year
A question asked over lunch changed the course of Pedro Juan Rosaly’s life. As Cameron McKenzie took a bite of his hamburger, Rosaly asked him: “If I get the financing, will you sell me the company?”
McKenzie answered with a simple “Sure,” finishing his bite just after. Rosaly, who now heads Islandwide Group, a Puerto Rican distribution and logistics company that delivers more than 3.5 million packages a year, sat down with Alberto Bacó for a new episode of El Blueprint to talk about his beginnings and how the people he met along the way shaped him as a professional, McKenzie among them.
To learn how the executive turned the company into a benchmark for distribution and logistics in Puerto Rico, tune in to the episode of El Blueprint on YouTube, Spotify and here at Caribbean.business on Tuesday, October 27.
After studying finance at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and earning an MBA from American University in Washington, Rosaly was given the chance to take the reins of a company that faced possible closure and had just 51 employees in 1988, then known as Islandwide Express. At that moment he set aside the finance hat and put on the operations one.
“Here you have to think about two things: the operation and the people,” he said, reflecting on how he had to unite employees around a common purpose to save the business. In 1996, a leveraged buyout, an acquisition financed mainly with debt, was completed with the support of the Economic Development Bank and Banco Popular.
The company’s approach, and the same philosophy behind it, would drive it to where it stands today: processing about 3,000 packages a day with 250 drivers and 60 package handlers, part of a workforce of 400 employees.
To learn how the executive turned the company into a benchmark for distribution and logistics in Puerto Rico, tune in to the episode of El Blueprint on YouTube, Spotify and here at Caribbean.business on Tuesday, October 27.
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