WILD GEESE:Emigrant business leaders on opportunities abroad:
John WintersVice-president of sales,
ZuumGaming Systems, Riga
MOST IRISHMEN would consider it adventurous or downright exotic to relocate to Latvia as an executive for a Slovenian gaming machines maker called Zuum. But not John Winters. Not after having set up operations for the New Zealand dairy board in Yemen, been evacuated to Djibouti by the Luftwaffe and having sold Coca-Cola in Saudi Arabia.
And that’s not to mention his time running a hotel in Tipperary and the historic Wicklow Gaol.
Born in Castlebar in 1962, Winters studied hotel management in Shannon and worked at hotels in Zurich and England before realising he was “happier as a guest in a hotel than running one”.
Then the real travel began, with a job in Saudi Arabia for Masstock, which introduced 20,000 cows and modern farming methods to help build local brand Almarai into the biggest integrated dairy foods company in the Middle East.
Winters returned to Ireland in 1989, but struggled to find a good job and ended up running a small hotel in Tipperary.
“When I had worked in Saudi, the New Zealand dairy board had offered me a job in Yemen, but at that point I had had enough of life in the desert,” he recalls.
“But the Tipperary hotel was going to be sold, Ireland was going down the tubes, and tax-free income was a great incentive. So I ended up going to Yemen, to package and sell powdered milk and set up distribution and marketing.
“Yemen’s a no-go zone now and it wasn’t great back then either. I had no understanding of what I was getting into, and I remember calling my girlfriend on the first night and thinking I’d made a terrible mistake. But, in the end, I loved it. It was a fascinating place to work.”
Winters still has good friends from his time in Yemen, fellow foreigners who formed a tightly knit community in a remote and isolated country whose society is deeply tribal.
His stay was initially peaceful, and the status of his employers meant he was never at risk of being kidnapped by the tribal groups that quite frequently took Westerners hostage to extract concessions from the government; most were well-treated and eventually freed unharmed.
Life changed when factions in northern and southern Yemen engaged in all-out war, and Winters was evacuated along with other Westerners in a German C130 transport plane to Djibouti.
Winters returned to Yemen when violence abated, but he was soon on his way back to Saudi Arabia to work as a regional sales manager for Coca-Cola, where he stayed until 1999.
After another brief sojourn in Ireland, which was again in the financial doldrums, he started work for Allied Domecq in Chicago, as a vice-president for Illinois: “It was a $100 million-a-year business and I had 14 or 15 people working for me. As a VP of a drinks company it was a great role in a great city.”
Winters first came to Riga in 2004, the year Latvia joined the European Union and just as it was experiencing a huge surge in economic growth.
After a couple of years, he was tempted to swap his “nice corporate job” as senior sales manager for Japan Tobacco International for a role in Latvia’s booming property market, becoming a broker for foreign investors looking to build in the Baltic state. Winters had “one very good year” before the credit-fuelled bubble burst and, as he says, “Latvia went from the fastest-growing market in the world to the fastest-falling.
“There were more flash cars here then than in Monte Carlo, and Riga made Moscow look poor,” Winters remembers. “Ireland, the Baltics and Dubai are some of the markets I understand; I’ve seen both ends of the economic cycle.”
In 2009, Winters again returned to an Ireland in crisis, and drew the dole for a few months before helping run Wicklow Gaol on a minimum wage: “It’s amazing what you can do when needs must.”
He was soon back in Riga, this time using it as a base to set up a worldwide distribution network for Zuum, which has taken him from Macao to Mexico, and from Las Vegas to Laos.
“The master-plan wasn’t to leave Ireland forever, but to go out for a bit of adventure at age 23,” says Winters. “But here I am and I love Riga. I have commitments and I don’t want to go anywhere. Latvia has made its painful reforms, it’s through the worst of the crisis and things are looking up here. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for Ireland.”
