FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

A self-taught “chemist”, a pro­fes­sion­al soap mak­er and a client-fo­cused ser­vice pro­fes­sion­al, Bren­da Gy­ton-Bap­tiste is a busi­ness­woman and en­tre­pre­neur mak­ing a splash in the soap-mak­ing in­dus­try. Al­though she spends her days per­form­ing cus­tomer ser­vice func­tions at her full-time job, she un­cov­ered her pas­sion for craft­ing ex­cit­ing, beau­ti­ful and aro­mat­ic soaps in 2018, which she has now built in­to her own small busi­ness.

Grow­ing up in a quaint home in Laven­tille, Gy­ton-Bap­tiste found one of her (many) call­ings ear­ly in life, re­al­is­ing that hos­pi­tal­i­ty and cook­ing were two of her great pas­sions. She pur­sued this call­ing, which took her to Ho­tel School (Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute)  to do a chef’s train­ing course, she was then able to grow her love for bak­ing and cook­ing, sub­se­quent­ly do­ing in­tern­ships at ho­tels, and su­per­vis­ing a bak­ery. Spend­ing the last 20-plus years in hos­pi­tal­i­ty and ser­vice has un­der­pinned Gy­ton-Bap­tiste’s dream of even­tu­al­ly own­ing her own full-ser­vice cus­tomer ser­vice busi­ness where she will be able to pass her skills on to younger peo­ple in the field.

The way she wound up in soap-mak­ing was pure­ly by hap­pen­stance. One day, she looked at her bar of soap and thought it was “so bor­ing”. Ru­mi­nat­ing on ways she could “lift” her day, she played with the idea of cre­at­ing a sub­lime, fresh soap, that would el­e­vate her day from the very be­gin­ning. Al­so con­sid­er­ing the ef­fects of age­ing, along with the in­creased harsh im­pact of the en­vi­ron­ment, she de­cid­ed to cre­ate a soap that would al­lay these ef­fects, keep­ing them at bay.

With these thoughts at the top of her mind, Gy­ton-Bap­tiste re­mem­bered a few years pri­or, when she got a recipe from a friend to make soap. Armed with mo­ti­va­tion and her recipe, she de­cid­ed to team up with her moth­er, Lin­da Gy­ton, and try her hand at soap mak­ing.

De­scrib­ing the steep learn­ing curve of soap mak­ing, Gy­ton-Bap­tiste re­called the dan­gers of the process of “saponi­fi­ca­tion” of which she had to be well aware.  Saponi­fi­ca­tion re­quires the chem­i­cal re­ac­tion of lye wa­ter, oils and fats, and if the prop­er pre­cau­tions are not tak­en, it can cause blind­ness or oth­er per­ma­nent is­sues. Gy­ton-Bap­tiste em­ploys a “melt-and-pour process”, which al­lows her to cus­tomise and fash­ion var­i­ous shapes to cater to her cus­tomers’ de­sires. Through years of learn­ing the process of soap mak­ing, she was able to bet­ter un­der­stand the way that the added in­gre­di­ents in so many com­mer­cial soaps and beau­ty prod­ucts can be very detri­men­tal. This en­cour­aged her to en­sure that her home­made soaps are nat­ur­al and or­gan­ic, with her favourite of all be­ing her tea tree soap, which is mul­ti­fac­eted and has prop­er­ties to boost the skin.

From this new­found pas­sion, Gy­ton-Bap­tiste birthed her com­pa­ny, Cu­ri­ous Shop Caribe, which of­fers both bar and liq­uid soaps that suit a va­ri­ety of needs. Cus­tomers, un­der her ad­vise­ment, re­quest var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of fra­grances, with her knowl­edge of each in­gre­di­ent’s prop­er­ties as their guide. Some of her most pop­u­lar soaps in­clude the ap­ple cider vine­gar soap, turmer­ic soap, co­conut soap and even her spe­cial­ly craft­ed char­coal and cof­fee soap which helps ex­fo­li­ate and smooth the skin, re­duc­ing the ap­pear­ance of cel­lulite for women. She de­scribes her soap mak­ing as her “small way” of sup­port­ing women as they aim to look, feel and smell their best.

Think­ing of soap mak­ing as her “art”, Gy­ton-Bap­tiste spends sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time ded­i­cat­ed to im­prov­ing her “soap art” and de­vel­op­ing and hon­ing her tech­niques. She is push­ing the bound­aries of what she can cre­ate, even ven­tur­ing in­to the unique fra­grances of Bai­ley’s Irish Cream. Gy­ton-Bap­tiste has be­gun show­cas­ing her beau­ti­ful, fra­grant soaps at the ven­dors’ mar­ket at Mode Alive, Val­sayn, on Fri­days and Sat­ur­days. She con­tin­ues to find ex­cite­ment and joy in her craft and flour­ish­ing in the en­tre­pre­neur­ial space. Gy­ton-Bap­tiste is on In­sta­gram at cu­ri­ousshop­caribe