SINGAPORE. DFS Changi Regional Merchandising Manager Patricia Sim left the company last Monday after 40 years and 3.5 months of magnificent service in travel retail. Her departure followed DFS’s departure from the wines & spirits concession at Changi on 8 June and its replacement by Korean travel retailer Lotte Duty Free.
The much-respected Ms Sim joined DFS in March 1980 as Merchandise Assistant. It was the start of an “amazing journey with many opportunities and challenges”, she recalls.
Ms Sim said her four decades with DFS were marked with “passion, commitment, dedication, loyalty and perseverance”.
She emphasised the “awesome” support of her bosses, retailers, agencies and DFS Changi store teams in beauty, watches & jewellery (during the first ten years) and later in spirits, wines and tobacco.
In The Moodie Blog in September last year, The Moodie Davitt Report Founder Chairman Martin Moodie described Ms Sim as a “key to the DFS Changi family”. He described her 40 years with the company as “incredible not just in duration but in quality and loyalty of service”.
Ms Sim said she would be taking a break from travel retail but hinted that, given the right opportunity, she could consider returning to her “passion as a good retailer”.
Martin Moodie writes: Changi Airport without Pat Sim does not feel like the same place. What an incredible sense of devotion and commitment she has brought to her years with DFS, based on a love for her job, her company, her colleagues and her customers.
On 1 March, she celebrated her 40th anniversary with DFS, writing to me: “I feel blessed that I managed to achieve a key milestone of 40 years in my career with DFS, with whom I have spent well over half my life. Thanks to all the vendor community who have never failed to support me. I cannot imagine what the separation day will be like when it arrives on June 15.”
Pat progressed from her first role as Merchandise Assistant on 1 March 1980 to her final responsibility as Regional Merchandise Manager. For the first decade, she worked across beauty, watches & jewellery and then spent 30 years immersed in the spirits, wine & tobacco sector. Every day on the job she strived to be the best she could be; to assist and inspire her colleagues; and to treat her customers as precious guests.
She spent countless hours in the DFS shops and cultivated rare skills in engaging with customers, helping them with purchases and inspiring loyalty towards DFS Changi. “Many of our customers are our friends today,” she told me.
Underlining the respect she commanded among the supplier sector, several vendor partners dropped me notes to ask if I was planning to write something about Pat’s departure. It is my pleasure to do so and on behalf of all who have worked with this great woman of travel retail, to thank her and to wish her well.
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