While today’s site visit was different from what we entered the trip expecting, it turned out to be incredibly interesting and valuable. We visited the G.A.P. Vassilopoulos Group which is a thriving company that operates in an impressively diverse number of services. While they started their business with shipping and port management, their business model quickly expanded to a diverse array of services–transport & logistics, airlines, hospitality, insurance, financial services, water treatment, and much more. They not only provide physical operations like storage and distribution, but also opportunities for companies to optimize their process. For example, they have ventured into business solutions technology where they have developed a stock management application that will notify companies when they need to refresh their stock. This then plays into the rest of their service offerings as a company can then order more stock and GAP can follow through with this request all the way to the shelving of the product if the company so chooses.

The largest idea I took away from this presentation was that nearly any business venture is possible if your “merits have the stamina”. When asked if they were worried about being spread too thin between all of the different areas they work in, they replied that their goal has always been to grow, and at the moment their merits have the stamina to continue growing. They did note that if there was a time where they weren’t confident in their ability to succeed with an expansion, they would not go ahead with such a plan until they were confident in their abilities. In terms of their general business advice, they discussed the balance between a lean and agile approach to supply chain and explained that while a lean approach used to be more widely used, COVID proved the need for responsiveness while still retaining low costs for customers. Through this discussion they also displayed their desire for forming a stronger community across the globe to account for the large differences in access to resources as in some places there is such an excess of goods that they are wasted and in other places there are no goods for consumers. I found this to be a valuable proposition as it proves the abilities of businesses to be conscious of their actions beyond their own profit and their current customers.