History and Experience

KBMS has deep roots in the consumer goods industry.  Gholam and Abbas Bayat began their career in the food and beverage industry in the 1980s by establishing a small import export business (ABA holdings) in NewJersey.  In 1985, they purchased Looza, a Belgian fruit juice company, and launched a new brand of fresh fruit juices called Fruivita.  The product was a huge success.  It captured more than 60% market share in France and made Looza exclusive supplier to huge distribution chains such as Marks & Spencer.  Looza's success led to the acquistion of Juice Bowl, a Florida based company with an 8% share of the market for fresh oranges in the US.  In the early 90's, Looza was sold to Dole which in turn sold its beverage operations to Tropicana.  Abbas Bayat became the president of Tropicana, Dole & Bayat International.

In 1997, Gholam and Abbas returned to their roots as independent owners and entrepreneurs by acquiring the Chaudfontaine Group from Interbrew.  One of Europe's mineral water jewels, Chaudfontaine was a natural mineral water source that had been underexploited by Interbrew, a beer giant whose focus was not on the water and juice business.  With support from major US and European investment funds, Gholam and Abbas began an ambitious strategy to build a food and beverage multinational composed of midmarket companies across Europe.  To support the acquisition andintegration of new companies into the group, facilitate management control and generate operational synergies, Gholam created an IT group to implement an ERP system based on SAP.

Gholam's aim was to develop an optimized solution that would be administratively light and provide users with best industry practices.  He took the unprecedented step of appointing his IT consultants to operational and management positions.  In this way, SAP expertise and operational requirements were married together to create a sleek organization.  Configurations within Maestro were optimized on a continuous basis to generate a more performant system.

The team supported the Group's acquisition strategy by completing all of the group's ERP implementations in record time, including factories in Belgium, France and the UK. The Chaudfontaine implementation became a point of reference and was showcased for companies such as Bacardi and Interbrew to help them identify weak points and optimize their solutions.

Following the acquisition of Chaudfontaine by Coca Cola in 2003, Gholam Bayat decided to draw on his success in Europe to found KBMS Inc., an on-demand ERP service provider for midmarket companies in the consumer goodsindustry.  Abbas joined him in launching the venture and, in addition to his responsibilities as Managing Director of the Sunnyland Group and President of Belgium's Royal Sporting Football Club of Charleroi, serves as chairman of KBMS.

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