Valdeen Shears-Nep­tune

With a bub­bly per­son­al­i­ty, an un­can­ny sense of de­ter­mi­na­tion, fore­sight, and hard work, the trend­set­ting fash­ion­ista is now the very proud own­er of Za­veza, a line of hand-paint­ed, of­ten three-di­men­sion­al wood­en jew­el­ry with an African in­flu­ence.

While fam­i­ly and friends felt Holdip should have done like her par­ents who are aca­d­e­mics and stay in the cor­po­rate world, even be­come a lawyer, she was de­ter­mined to fol­low her cre­ative spir­it and do her own thing.

Per­se­ver­ance paid off ear­li­er this year when she pitched her com­pa­ny for in­vest­ment on the lo­cal show, Plant­i­ng Seeds on CNC3.

Holdip, born in St Kitts but raised be­tween Trinidad and Grena­da, was of­fered an in­vest­ment for 25 per cent of her com­pa­ny. This al­so came with in­valu­able guid­ance and ad­vice from both Kris­tine Thomp­son, co-own­er of the Chuck E Cheese fran­chise and Maria Daniel, a part­ner at Ernst and Young.

She is now branch­ing off to a line of san­dals, ex­pect­ed to be launched ear­ly next month, and plans to take the Caribbean and UK by storm.

While this may sound like a lot of glitz and glam, Holdip said busi­ness was a big sac­ri­fice.

With her trade­mark dim­pled smile, she re­called her first set of busi­ness cards in 2014, when she now start­ed, were hand­writ­ten at home. She sim­ply could not af­ford to have them pro­fes­sion­al­ly done.

Two years lat­er, Holdip was able to give clients and cus­tomers her own cus­tomised brand­ed busi­ness cards.

As sim­ple as it may seem for some, for Holdip this was a re­mark­able achieve­ment and a re­minder of the chal­lenges she faced ear­ly in her ca­reer.

"I re­mem­ber dis­tinct­ly know­ing that even with no job and no re­al home of my own, I just would not give up. It would have been too easy and I would have suf­fered back in a cor­po­rate world. I am cre­ative and while this may of­ten mean to en­dure, it al­so makes me more ap­pre­cia­tive and mind­ful of the strug­gles I had to go through to reach where I am at and still go­ing," said Holdip.

In 2014, with the re­main­der of her sev­er­ance pay from a promi­nent in­sur­ance firm, Holdip start­ed job hunt­ing.

One month lat­er, even though she se­cured a job as a man­ag­er, she said she hat­ed "every minute of it".

Holdip found so­lace in her hob­by which was jew­el­ry mak­ing. She lat­er set out to for­malise it, nam­ing her busi­ness Ko­r­po­rate Kou­ture, and be­gan pro­duc­ing some con­ser­v­a­tive pieces for co-work­ers and her­self to ac­ces­sorise their com­pa­ny's uni­forms.

She spent many days and nights do­ing re­search and pitch­ing her prod­uct to glob­al mag­a­zines.

Us­ing her God-giv­en tal­ent, Holdip lat­er pro­duced over 300 unique ear­rings to ship off to Mer­cedes Benz Am­s­ter­dam Fash­ion Week. While she did not make mon­ey out of this ven­ture, she was able to es­tab­lish con­tacts and ben­e­fit­ed from in­ter­na­tion­al net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Con­tin­u­ing to cre­ate unique pieces, she lat­er emerged a fi­nal­ist in an ex­porTT event, Mod­eTT, which opened doors for her to now have her ear­rings in Guade­loupe and Mar­tinique.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty al­so saw her fea­tured in the glob­al fash­ion pub­li­ca­tion Mode Mood Mode Mag­a­zine, which is sold in Paris and Cana­da.

Holdip signed up for an ex­porTT op­por­tu­ni­ty in Oc­to­ber 2015 called Fit4Eu­rope.

It was hard­ly smooth sail­ing from there, as she re­called be­ing dis­ap­point­ed when ex­pect­ed sales for the Christ­mas sea­son did not ma­te­ri­alise.

Good news came a few months lat­er.

"I got a call in June 2016 stat­ing that I was cho­sen to be part of the mis­sion that got to go to Eu­rope. I went to Eng­land and France in Sep­tem­ber 2016."

Op­por­tu­ni­ty knocks

An­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty knocked.

"That's where Plant­i­ng Seeds came in. One of my cus­tomers/friends sent me a link to sign up for a po­ten­tial in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty. I did it, be­cause you don't let op­por­tu­ni­ties pass you by. I for­got I signed up for it till a day in May 2016, I got an email stat­ing that they nev­er re­ceived my busi­ness plan and the dead­line was in two days. Due to things be­ing so bad fi­nan­cial­ly, I was stay­ing by a friend be­cause I could not even pay my rent," she re­mem­bered.

Her re­quest for a three-day ex­ten­sion was favoured and she proud­ly pro­duced the 47-page busi­ness plan three days lat­er.

Armed with con­fi­dence and an as­sort­ment of her jew­el­ry, Holdip was not about to leave the ne­go­ti­at­ing room emp­ty-hand­ed. Holdip was able to sway the judges in­to of­fer­ing her a $100,000 in­vest­ment for a 25 per cent stake in Za­veza.

Even though the in­vest­ment from Plant­i­ng Seeds was not im­me­di­ate, it re­in­forced her will to suc­ceed.

"I stopped look­ing at how hard life was and start­ed look­ing at what was al­ready at my dis­pos­al and how best to make it work for me."

A few months lat­er in Eu­rope, she learnt "the true val­ue of my com­pa­ny".

Holdip learnt the val­ue of shar­ing through her trip to Lon­don and formed the Face­book plat­form, "Fe­male En­tre­pre­neurs of the Caribbean," a com­mu­ni­ty where sto­ries and op­por­tu­ni­ties are shared and mem­bers en­cour­age each oth­er through hard­ships.

Holdip lament­ed that cre­ative peo­ple of­ten take the val­ue of their gifts for grant­ed. She con­tin­ues to lov­ing and nur­tur­ing her tal­ent.

I stopped look­ing at how hard life was and start­ed look­ing at what was al­ready at my dis­pos­al and how best to make it work for me.