ro uk

Solutii de transport din 1997!


A challenge to institutionalised ideas



"Financial Times", August 2002

It was during a visit to Romania in 1996 that James Gray-Cheape, a British businessman, decided there was a niche in Bucharest for an intra-city courier service. Friends told him it was too soon - that the economy was not fully developed and there was insufficient foreign investment. But Mr Gray-Cheape's personal experience convinced him that there was an opportunity. "There was nobody running an intra-city courier service and I was getting really frustrated trying to move documents around for other businesses," he recalls.

After a short spell working as a manager with BCCP, a London courier company, and having looked at similar operations in other eastern European cities, he returned to Bucharest in 1997 to set up Pegasus Courier.

Like many investors in Romania, he soon ran into bureaucratic hurdles and corrupt or incompetent officials. He overcame these barriers but was soon confronted with an unexpected problem.

The backbone of any city courier service, especially in Bucharest where winter temperatures can reach minus 20oC and in the summer more than 35oC, isa group of young, hard-working men on bicycles. "I needed young people who were fit, able to speak English and dynamic," Mr Gray-Cheape says: "I suppose I needed people who hadn't had a soft, easy upbringing - who wouldn't refuse to work if it started to rain."

For those with no knowledge of Romania this might not seem a problem. Romania then, as often now, was viewed as being a few notches above a basket case with its young people desperate for work and trying to leave in their thousands. The country is still one of the poorest in Europe with 50 per cent of its people living below the poverty line.

However, the headline statistics are misleading. Bucharest has a massive black economy and is disproportionately richer than the rest of Romania. It also has a Latin, rather than a Slavic culture. In Romania girls do the housework and boys are very often spoilt by their mothers.

These realities made the task of finding the right workforce more difficult than expected. But a solution emerged from an unusual quarter - the children's institutions known in the west as "orphanages".

"A friend of mine was teaching English at a Bucharest 'orphanage'," says Mr Gray-Cheape. "He told me about the guys he was teaching and how they were a great bunch of fit young men who already had a team spirit. They were also anxious to prove themselves." The boys also spoke English, thanks to the dozens of volunteers who went to Romanian institutions after the 1989 revolution.

A meeting was arranged and Mr Gray-Cheape's first five bicycle couriers were soon hired. "They came from a regimented environment and were easier to train than some of the non-institutionalised young men we have employed more recently," he says.

Since then young men from children's homes have made up the bulk of his couriers. His decision to recruit from children's homes was controversial. Romanian institutions provided some of the most shocking television pictures of the 1990s. The images of disturbed, malnourished and abused children galvanised thousands to raise money or help as volunteers. Even in Romania there was little contact between those in the children's homes and mainstream society.

"Many Romanians warned me that kids from the 'orphanages' might be wild, or drunks. They warned me against hiring them."

Such was the prejudice against "orphans" that Mr Gray-Cheape kept his workers' origins a secret until the business was well established. After 18 months the story emerged, causing a stir in the Romanian media but a highly positive reaction from customers, who said they would not have guessed that the uniformed, well-spoken couriers were from institutions.

Mr Gray-Cheape's decision, although unusual, was a triumph of business reality over stereotypes. Most people think they know about Romanian "orphans" and "orphanages" through television, charities or volunteers who have worked in such institutions. But, as Mr Gray-Cheape found out, the situation is not as bleak as many charities and volunteers claim.

In reality there are very few orphans in Romania. Almost all those in children's homes have one or two surviving parents and have some contact with them. According to Romanian government statistics, only 1 per cent of the children in these institutions have no parents living - the normal definition of an orphan - and very few have been abandoned. Most are there because their parents are too ill or too poor to look after them. Unicef figures show 80 per cent of those in children's homes have contact with their parents.

Pegasus has thrived since Mr Gray-Cheape employed the first five young men in 1997. Turnover has doubled every year and the company now employs over 50 people. It has expanded countrywide and in 2000 Pegasus started an international partnership with Airborne Express, the third largest US courier service, and Aramex International, a Jordanian company.

Anyone starting a business in a developing country can be accused of exploitation. Such claims are all the easier against Mr Gray-Cheape, who employs recruits from a section of Romania's most vulnerable people. Questions are often asked when he gives interviews to local media. However, Mr Gray-Cheape says the project was business mixed with the pleasure of helping the less fortunate.

"Every Pegasus Courier is treated equally. They are paid in relation to the amount of work they complete and not according to their background," he says.

The couriers themselves answer allegations of exploitation by pointing out that they can earn more than $300 a a month - three times the average salary in Romania.