Joe Ombuor
15 April 2008
column
Nairobi — Eddie Davis and his business partner, Dick Shirtliff are long dead, but the business they founded together and rolled out, Davis and Shirtliff, continues to flourish under the banner of their names not only in Kenya, but throughout East Africa and beyond.
It is not clear why the two early entrepreneurs, who both served in the British army during the Second World War decided to use their second names for a company specialising largely on water and water equipments.
David Gatende: We won the Best Creativity & Innovation award in 2000, the Best Quality Management award four times in a row from 2004 to 2007
"Perhaps it is because both the founders were water experts and their names were so much associated with water," says Alec Davis, Eddie's son who took over the business in 1990 and is currently the Chief executive.
What started humbly as a plumbing and water engineering company at the end of the Second World War in 1946 was to survive the state of emergency and experience phenomenal growth that has seen its wings spread as far a field as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia and Southern Sudan.
"Today, besides manufacturing water treatment products at our workshops in Nairobi, we import and distribute water equipments throughout the region," says Mr David Gatende, the company's Managing Director. Besides the pumps for borehole and surface purposes, the company to which Gatende has put 22 years of dedicated service specialises in swimming pool equipment and solar power products.
A man of slight build, Mr Gatende is effervescent and knows his organisation and its operations like the back of his hand. He calls his staff by name, even the ones barely a day old in employment.
He grew up admiring his engineer uncle, Mr Kim Gatende, a powerful figure who worked as Rift Valley Provincial Engineer during President Kenyatta's reign and aspired to be an engineer from childhood.
It was in pursuit of that childhood dream fired on by his role model uncle that Gatende excelled in science subjects at Lenana School, where he scored three principal passes in mathematics, physics and history in A- levels, qualifying for admission to McGill University in Canada for an engineering course. His graduation in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science honours degree in Agricultural engineering was a well deserved achievement that would open the gates for a career he has embraced with satisfaction.
Gatende wasted no time after graduation, putting his skills into use the moment he was back on the Kenyan soil by devoting a full year of work at his parents' farm in Mau Narok. He then spent the second year as an intern with a church organisation known as The Navigators.
He joined Davis and Shirtliff in 1986 as a field engineer. Aged only 24 at the time, he was the company's second graduate engineer besides the proprietor and now Group CEO, Mr Alec Davis whom he deputises. Today the company boasts over 50 sales engineers in Kenya and has a group work force of 230.
What followed for Gatende, a gifted and dedicated worker with a sharp mind to match, was a series of promotions that saw him rise to the position of operations manager in 1988 and sales manager in 1990. Five more years landed him in the lofty perch of commercial director in 1995 and in 2001, he was appointed Managing Director.
To further hone his skills, Gatende spent two years between 1996 and 1998 at the United States International University in Nairobi doing a Masters in International Business Administration (MIBA) course where he specialised in Strategic Management.
One only needs to see Gatende at work in the company's Dundori road premises in the Industrial area to appreciate his climb to the top.
"Our group annual revenue will most likely cross the Sh2 billion mark this year - God willing and providing we get a Cabinet!" he says with a disarming smile as we pace around the premises, meeting employees.
At one point, a trailer is offloading merchandise from Mombasa. He says: "Those are Pedrollo water pumps from Italy. From here, we distribute them to the entire East African region through our branch network. The ability to bring in appropriate water related products from all over the world and efficiently distribute them throughout our region is one of our core competences about which we are very proud,' he says.
In the workshops, teams in overalls are busy doing general repairs on imported water pumps and items the firm manufactures such as fibreglass filters, water treatment plants, purifiers and solar water heaters.
A keen supporter of the annual Company of the Year Awards (Coya), Gatende basks in the company's exceptional performance exemplified with a remarkable harvest of eight Coya awards in as many years.
"We won the Best Creativity & Innovation award in 2000, the Best Quality Management award four times in a row from 2004 to 2007, the Best Corporate Planning Practice award in 2002 and 2003 and the Best Supply Chain Management award in 2006".
In recognition of his contribution to the water industry, Gatende was appointed chairman of the Kenya Water Industry Association (KWIA) in January this year. In the same vein, he is the water governor in the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) where he represents the private sector in dealings with the Ministry of Water & Irrigation.
Since Gatende took over as Managing Director in 2001, Davis and Shirtliff has registered considerable growth, conspicuous among them, the opening of subsidiary offices in Lusaka, Zambia (2001) and Kigali, Rwanda (2004). The Kampala, Uganda and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania branches opened earlier in 1996 and 1997 respectively. The most recent subsidiary is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which was opened on Valentines Day this year, venturing northwards where few Kenyan businesses have ventured.
Born 46 years ago in Nairobi, Gatende is married with three teenagers. He is currently studying for a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology at Daystar University. His parting words, "I consider myself really blessed by God to work for a great company, with excellent staff, in a vital industry with a fantastic future and in a region that desperately needs our products and services".
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