GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

At 19, when most peo­ple are just be­gin­ning to chart their path in life, Dale Par­son, who is now the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, was hand­ed the reins of the lo­cal paint man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, Kalei­do­scope, af­ter the pass­ing of his fa­ther, Stephen, who built it from the ground up in 1970.

The weight of lead­er­ship fell on his shoul­ders, along with the qui­et bur­den of keep­ing his fam­i­ly unit­ed through un­cer­tain times.

With un­wa­ver­ing re­solve and a ma­tu­ri­ty be­yond his years, Par­son stepped in­to the role with grit and de­ter­mi­na­tion, trans­form­ing chal­lenges in­to op­por­tu­ni­ty as he con­tin­ues to ho­n­our and build on the foun­da­tion the vi­sion his fa­ther be­gan decades ear­li­er.

To­day, the Kalei­do­scope name is a key play­er in T&T’s eco­nom­ic land­scape.

As the na­tion marks its 63rd year of In­de­pen­dence, Par­son gave the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian an in­ti­mate look at the first 100 per cent lo­cal­ly-owned paint man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny in the coun­try, chron­i­cling the dif­fi­cul­ties as well as nav­i­gat­ing a fam­i­ly en­ter­prise and chart­ing a course for what lies ahead.

The sto­ry of Kalei­do­scope start­ed with Stephen, a man of hum­ble ori­gins who, at the age of 18, be­gan his jour­ney at British Paints af­ter com­plet­ing his ed­u­ca­tion at San Juan Sec­ondary School.

British Paints was lo­cat­ed in Laven­tille, close to where Co­conut Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (CGA) cur­rent­ly stands.

Par­son said his fa­ther didn’t just find a job; he climbed the lad­der with un­wa­ver­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion from the po­si­tion of an or­di­nary of­fice boy to that of pres­i­dent of a British-run en­ti­ty, set­ting the stage for his own en­tre­pre­neur­ial vi­sion.

Af­ter Trinidad gained its in­de­pen­dence in 1962, Stephen was in­spired to forge his own path, lead­ing him to es­tab­lish his own com­pa­ny in 1969 named Trinidad Paints Ltd.

By this time, he had amassed ex­ten­sive knowl­edge from his years at British Paints.

This move co­in­cid­ed with a sig­nif­i­cant shift as in the late 1960s, as the par­ent com­pa­ny of British Paints was ac­quired by Berg­er Paints of In­dia.

Stephen, the last of 13 chil­dren, dri­ven by a vi­sion for a brand that em­bod­ied the very essence of colour, re­named his com­pa­ny Kalei­do­scope a year lat­er in 1970.

“Be­cause in those days, in the 60s, there was not a lot of va­ri­ety of colours avail­able,” Par­son ex­plained.

The lo­ca­tion of the Kalei­do­scope Paints fac­to­ry in El So­cor­ro holds deep his­tor­i­cal and fam­i­ly sig­nif­i­cance for the Par­son fam­i­ly.

The very land where the com­pa­ny now stands was once a rice field cul­ti­vat­ed by Stephen’s grand­fa­ther, an in­den­tured labour­er from In­dia, who worked for the British dur­ing the colo­nial era.

When he de­cid­ed to es­tab­lish his own com­pa­ny, Stephen’s aunts and un­cles, who then owned the land, sold it to him with a loan he took from De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Ltd (DFL).

This act trans­formed a piece of land that rep­re­sent­ed his fam­i­ly’s his­to­ry of labour for a for­eign pow­er in­to the foun­da­tion of a suc­cess­ful, lo­cal­ly-owned en­ter­prise, a tes­ta­ment to the fam­i­ly’s jour­ney from colo­nial-era in­den­ture­ship to eco­nom­ic in­de­pen­dence.

Par­son shared that many be­lieved his fa­ther was “a lit­tle bit crazy” for his de­ci­sion to start a new com­pa­ny as they thought he was mak­ing a fool­ish move. How­ev­er, Stephen proved them wrong.

He toiled tire­less­ly un­til his death at 53.

Par­son’s mo­ti­va­tion to join his fa­ther’s busi­ness was a pre-de­ter­mined path as he shared that his fa­ther was ac­tive­ly groom­ing him to take over, es­pe­cial­ly as he was the on­ly one among five sib­lings with a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.

Par­son had just com­plet­ed his chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies but trag­i­cal­ly, his fa­ther passed away in Sep­tem­ber 1991, just a month be­fore his grad­u­a­tion.

Seek­ing ad­vice from the great be­yond

When Par­son’s fa­ther passed away in his ear­ly fifties from heart fail­ure—a tragedy Par­son di­rect­ly at­trib­uted to im­mense stress—the weight of both the fam­i­ly and the busi­ness fell square­ly on the young man’s shoul­ders.

The ini­tial years were par­tic­u­lar­ly gru­elling. Par­son re­count­ed that he of­ten found so­lace and coun­sel in an un­con­ven­tion­al place: his fa­ther’s grave.

He would vis­it late in the evening, speak­ing to the head­stone about the busi­ness chal­lenges he faced, con­vinced that his fa­ther was spir­i­tu­al­ly guid­ing him through those dif­fi­cult times.

Through­out it all, his moth­er, he added, who is still alive and re­mains a stead­fast pil­lar of sup­port as she not on­ly con­tin­ues to pro­vide en­cour­age­ment but al­so serves as the glue that holds the fam­i­ly to­geth­er and en­sures the busi­ness re­mains sta­ble.

Par­son not on­ly ful­filled his fa­ther’s vi­sion, step­ping in to lead the com­pa­ny but he has since con­tin­ued to build on his ed­u­ca­tion, earn­ing two mas­ter’s de­grees and is now near­ing com­ple­tion of his PhD.

Kalei­do­scope now

Over the past three decades, Kalei­do­scope has ex­pe­ri­enced re­mark­able growth.

A key pil­lar of the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess, Par­son said, is its un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to cus­tomer re­la­tions, plac­ing a high val­ue on main­tain­ing strong, long-last­ing re­la­tion­ships with its clients.

For ex­am­ple, some of its ex­port clients, such as Toolsie Per­saud in Guyana—the largest pri­vate­ly owned and op­er­at­ed com­pa­ny in Guyana op­er­at­ing in the build­ing and con­struc­tion sec­tor—have been pur­chas­ing from Kalei­do­scope for im­pres­sive 50 years.

Shar­ing how the com­pa­ny has grown, Par­son not­ed from its in­cep­tion to the present day, the com­pa­ny has wit­nessed an in­crease in its mar­ket share and its pro­duc­tion vol­ume by ap­prox­i­mate­ly “3,000 per cent.”

This ex­po­nen­tial growth has been fu­elled not on­ly by its core op­er­a­tions but al­so by strate­gic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion such as bot­tling and brew­ing pro­duc­ing bev­er­ages such as Rude Boy and Peardrax un­der con­tract from third par­ties.

Par­son at­test­ed that Kalei­do­scope’s suc­cess has al­so been built on a ro­bust ex­port strat­e­gy, suc­cess­ful­ly serv­ing mar­kets across the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) for near­ly 50 years.

The com­pa­ny’s reach ex­tends be­yond Cari­com to in­clude coun­tries in the Dutch Caribbean, such as Cu­ra­cao and Aru­ba.

How­ev­er, this suc­cess was achieved de­spite sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges.

The com­pa­ny’s growth and ex­pan­sion con­tin­ued through var­i­ous pe­ri­ods of ad­ver­si­ty.

It suc­cess­ful­ly weath­ered the lo­gis­ti­cal night­mares of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, over­com­ing ma­jor chal­lenges re­lat­ed to ship­ping and raw ma­te­r­i­al pro­cure­ment.

And in the ear­li­er years, the com­pa­ny nav­i­gat­ed the eco­nom­ic land­scape of the 1970s and 80s, a pe­ri­od marked the Black Pow­er Move­ment and strict ex­change con­trols.

“So you had to ap­ply to gov­ern­ment to get forex to buy raw ma­te­r­i­al. It was re­al­ly a chal­leng­ing time,” Par­son re­count­ed.

Even to­day, amid a per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change forex crunch, Par­son said Kalei­do­scope main­tains a strong ex­port port­fo­lio, which con­tributes a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of its to­tal rev­enue.

“The com­pa­ny’s long-term vi­sion is to be­come a ma­jor net forex earn­er, po­si­tion­ing it­self to sell for­eign cur­ren­cy back to com­mer­cial banks and in turn, con­tribute to the eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of the en­tire coun­try,” Par­son at­test­ed.

While ex­pan­sion in­to oth­er mar­kets is al­ways on the cards, Par­son, with­out giv­ing de­tails, said Kalei­do­scope is soon ex­pect­ed bring out a prod­uct that “is not paint, but is aligned to paint.”

Strength­en­ing T&T’s busi­ness land­scape

Par­son, a now sea­soned busi­nes­sown­er in his ear­ly 50’s, shared some nuggets of ad­vice, em­pha­sis­ing the need for self-re­liance and re­silience.

He be­lieves busi­ness­es should move away from de­pend­ing on “hand-me-downs” and in­stead strive for in­de­pen­dence, not­ing that to­day’s In­de­pen­dence Day is not just about in­di­vid­ual suc­cess but about be­ing able to con­tribute back to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and econ­o­my.

A key strat­e­gy for achiev­ing this, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the face of lo­cal eco­nom­ic shifts or po­lit­i­cal changes, is to fo­cus on build­ing ex­port ca­pac­i­ty.

“To try and build your ex­port mar­ket and try to be re­silient and look for ways that your busi­ness can be­come re­silient to any ex­ter­nal shocks out­side of your busi­ness that may change; whether it is a change of gov­ern­ment, whether it is a short­age of forex, whether it is geopo­lit­i­cal moves by the US Pres­i­dent. What­ev­er comes, you have to find a way to nav­i­gate through all that to make sure that your busi­ness is re­silient,” Par­son con­clud­ed.