It has been 100 years since KC Con­fec­tionery start­ed op­er­a­tions as a fam­i­ly busi­ness in Cou­va.

But in the last two years, the com­pa­ny’s re­solve was test­ed more than ever.

KC had evolved from a sim­ple fam­i­ly op­er­a­tion sell­ing Par­adise Plum sweets with­in their com­mu­ni­ty to a ful­ly-fledged com­mer­cial gi­ant in the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket. But in its cen­ten­ni­al year it its tra­di­tion­al streams shak­en by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Well the biggest im­pact on KC over the last two years has been a de­cline in sales. And of course, as you know, ma­jor sec­tors of the econ­o­my shut down, which is what re­strict­ed sales and al­so a lot of our chan­nels of sales, es­pe­cial­ly like in schools, restau­rants, the casi­nos, the bars, which were closed, so there was no op­por­tu­ni­ty to sell in those ar­eas,” said the com­pa­ny’s CEO Sat­nar­ine Bachew.

Bachew be­came CEO of the can­dy com­pa­ny ear­li­er this year, and has the chal­lenge of chart­ing a new course for the com­pa­ny as it plots the re­cov­ery from the fall­out of the pan­dem­ic. He ex­plained that de­spite the de­clines in sales, there have been lessons learned and the com­pa­ny’s re­solve has been strength­ened.

“We had to re­struc­ture our strat­e­gy to get in­to the su­per­mar­kets, the phar­ma­cies, what­ev­er on a greater em­pha­sis so that we can keep up with our sales but there was still de­clines be­cause de­mand was low. What this has brought to us is the fo­cus more on niche mar­kets and how we can get bet­ter sales when there are not the mass prod­ucts out there. This is a les­son that we’ve learned over the last few years,” said Bachew.

The com­pa­ny as a re­sult, has placed greater em­pha­sis on its ex­port mar­ket. Bachew ex­plained KC had a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go, but the time had come to ex­pand even fur­ther.

“I must say very proud­ly that KC is a net earn­er of for­eign ex­change, and our ex­port mar­kets have worked tremen­dous­ly for us. Al­most 70% of our pro­duc­tion is ex­port­ed and this has brought great val­ue in terms of earn­ing US dol­lars, and we con­tin­ue to ex­pand that area. Cur­rent­ly, af­ter the COVID we are re­vis­it­ing all of our cur­rent ex­port mar­kets to see where the op­por­tu­ni­ties are that we can grow and al­so look­ing at new mar­kets. Es­pe­cial­ly in the US, the UK, we re­cent­ly sent our first ship­ment in­to the UK just Feb­ru­ary of this year. And that is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­pan­sion. Be­cause you know, UK, we know we can ex­pand in­to Eu­rope, which will bring re­al val­ue to us,” he said.

The com­pa­ny has be­gun to see signs of fur­ther­ing its reach. Last Wednes­day it achieved a mile­stone with­in the Cari­com mar­ket, as for the first time KC sent a full con­tain­er of prod­ucts to Grena­da, when tra­di­tion­al­ly its dis­trib­u­tors would on­ly call for less than a con­tain­er.

The com­pa­ny has not been afraid to en­ter un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry, ac­cord­ing to Bachew it is the KC spir­it of ad­ven­ture that lead it to be­come a mar­ket leader in can­dy pro­duc­tion and sales in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“(KC) has al­so been a very cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive com­pa­ny in terms of the prod­ucts that they pro­duce. They try to blend in the lo­cal cul­ture in terms of some of the prod­ucts that we make and that has gone a long way in cap­tur­ing mar­ket share. It has al­so been a very ad­ven­tur­ous com­pa­ny in terms of ex­pan­sion. In the very ear­ly days, the com­pa­ny was based in Cou­va. It still is but most of its mar­ket was in Cou­va,” said Bachew, “The Found­ing Fa­thers saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand this in­to Cari­com, in­to the US, in­to the UK, in­to Cana­da. And this is what has pro­vid­ed the en­gine of growth for KC over the years. So its cre­ativ­i­ty, its in­no­va­tion, its ad­ven­ture in­to the ex­port mar­ket, to good sales and al­so its care of its peo­ple and the du­ty of care.”

The com­pa­ny has recog­nised, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of the pan­dem­ic that it can not sim­ply ex­pect to re­ly on its tra­di­tion­al streams.

This has prompt­ed the com­pa­ny to be­come a bit more in­no­v­a­tive and ex­plore new lanes to en­sure con­tin­ued suc­cess in its sec­ond cen­tu­ry.

Bachew said, “It’s al­ways search­ing for the new wave and this is where we are right now search­ing for what will pro­pel KC in­to the fu­ture, where the growth is gonna come from and we are putting a lot of em­pha­sis on ex­pan­sion of our mar­kets. The ex­port mar­ket is go­ing to be the key to KC. Be­cause as we know what we call mar­ket is 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple where­as the ex­port mar­ket is a whole world out there.”

He ad­mit­ted that were new chal­lenges posed by the Ukraine Rus­sia con­flict but the com­pa­ny through the ded­i­ca­tion of its staff, many of whom stayed on in spite of chal­lenges dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, KC is push­ing on­ward.

“To our em­ploy­ees who have stayed with us, most of our em­ploy­ees every year for a very long time. And it’s be­cause of the du­ty of care and the love of this com­pa­ny. So we want to say thanks very much and we look for­ward, ea­ger­ly in­tel­li­gence in­to the fu­ture. Al­though there are so many un­cer­tain­ties in terms of es­pe­cial­ly in the glob­al sup­ply chain right now, which is so dis­rup­tive, that you know, the whole ar­rival of spares and raw ma­te­ri­als and every­thing brings the chal­lenge of its own,” said Bachew.

He stressed how­ev­er that it will re­quire a lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion and hard work from the team, but he was con­fi­dent the com­pa­ny would de­liv­er.

“Of course, that is not go­ing to just hap­pen just like that. We have a new prod­uct line that we are work­ing on and that is good to give us the im­pe­tus to get back out there. Plus, of course, be­com­ing more com­pet­i­tive, pro­duc­ing more, ex­pand­ing our op­er­a­tions. And this is where our head­space is. It’s all about growth. We have come to a cer­tain dis­tance over 100 years and the next 100 is go­ing to be even bet­ter,” he said.