A dedicated family man who grew up in South Africa during the Apartheid regime has grabbed the top job at a mobile phone store.
Matt Jones, 36, who lives in Chester, is the new manager of Carphone Warehouse at the Eagles Meadow shopping centre, Wrexham.
He was born in the village of Witbank near Johannesburg, is married to Marie and they have a four-year-old son, Owen.
Matt spent periods of his childhood in the country torn by racism when his late dad Charles, who was originally from Manchester, found work there as an electrician in the gold and platinum mines, but was largely shielded from the strife.
He said: “I was a bit too young to appreciate what Nelson Mandela was doing.
“There was still apartheid. I was too young to appreciate some elements of it.
“Every house had a little hut, which was just a stone bed, and a black person would live in there who would maintain your house.
“They didn’t want anything else, they just wanted a roof over their head, and in return they would look after the house, do the lawns, that type of stuff. It’s very different now days. It was another world.
“It was hot, and there were lots of animals. You’d walk out of the house, there’d be spiders crawling everywhere.
“You started school really early at 6:30, and you’d finish in the afternoon because it was too hot. The afternoon was dedicated to sport. They didn’t do much cricket or rugby ironically. It was usually athletics or swimming.”
Matt vividly remembers the when South Africa won the Rugby World Cup in 1995, after he’d moved to Wrexham with his family.
He said: “Watching Nelson Mandela present the trophy to Francois Pienaar the South African captain was really symbolic of how he brought the country together. It really resonated and I was upset when Nelson Mandela died.”
After studying sociology and psychology at Yale College, now part of Coleg Cambria, Matt started working for his step dad Joe Scott as a sales assistant at Scott’s Furniture in Marchweil.
He said: “I started off in sales and that progressed into buying stock. I was a sales associate but because it was family business I did a bit of everything. Whatever needed to be done like delivering in the van I’d muck in.
“It gave me a good grounding in rapport building, getting to know customers, marking up, pricing stock, dealing with vendor’s networks, and manufacturers.
“For Joe, everything was about service. He believes that if you service the customers properly they will buy more and more stuff off you.
“Building rapport with customers is really easy. It’s about talking to them and listening to them, trying to find things in common and talking about that, just show interest in anything that they’ve got.”
Matt joined Carphone Warehouse in 2004 and has steadily climbed the ladder form being a sales assistant to getting the top job at Eagles Meadow.
He said: “I think Eagles Meadow as a shopping centre is really nice. I think it’s got pretty much everything you’d want from a shopping centre. It’s got good stores, good restaurants, and good entertainment like the Odeon and Tenpin, that’s really good
“Carphone is very customer led. It’s about making sure that everything we recommend or sell that it benefits the customer.
“We have a tablet with a special piece of software on which we’ve called Pin Point, which we’ve launched nationally.
“It finds the best deals from across all the different networks. It takes a lot of the stress and strain off customers.”
Eagles Meadow Manager Kevin Critchley congratulated Matt on his appointment.
He said: “I am delighted for Matt and I am sure he will be a great asset to Carphone Warehouse and the customers they serve at Eagles Meadow.”
