My­ck­iel Haynes is a shin­ing ex­am­ple that dreams, along with hard work and ded­i­ca­tion, do in fact come through.

Haynes is the founder and CEO of Gold­en Rootz Ltd, an e-com­merce op­er­a­tion, which ex­ports herbs and spices nat­u­ral­ly grown in Trinidad.

These are sold in the pow­der, flakes and de­hy­drat­ed forms.

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to have a strong in­ter­na­tion­al pres­ence in the US and the UK with its sights set to en­ter oth­er mar­kets such as Eu­rope.

How­ev­er, the jour­ney of suc­cess has not been easy.

Haynes shared some in­sights with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing the in­au­gur­al SME Mar­ket­place host­ed by Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL) on Thurs­day.

“The biggest chal­lenge was get­ting fi­nanc­ing. I would have been in­to freeze dry­ing long be­fore but the ma­chine was ex­pen­sive, which was close to $40,000,” he said.

He praised the bank for help­ing him scale up his busi­ness.

“The bank helped us get our ma­chin­ery and they are even there to sup­port us to get fu­ture ma­chin­ery to car­ry the busi­ness to an­oth­er lev­el.

Gold­en Rootz Ltd which is home-grown and was reg­is­tered in 2019, cur­rent­ly mar­kets its prod­ucts on plat­forms such as Ama­zon, Ebay, Wal­mart and mytrin­ish­op.com.

“As or­ders come through our web­site, we ship from Brook­lyn to any coun­try. Our most pop­u­lar prod­ucts are sor­rel, pi­men­to, scor­pi­on pep­per and Chadon Beni. In the freeze dry form we sell dasheen bush. Even though in Brook­lyn a lot of peo­ple can get fresh chadon beni there are cer­tain places which do not, like Texas and Penn­syl­va­nia, so we tapped in­to those ar­eas.

“We al­so have pep­per sauce that is dry so when you put wa­ter in­to the pack­age it will be re­hy­drat­ed back in­to pep­per sauce,” Haynes said.
He is cur­rent­ly work­ing to have his prod­ucts sold in lo­cal su­per­mar­kets and he al­so plans to ob­tain a larg­er space to ex­pand his of­fer­ings.

Or­gan­ic with a Pur­pose is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of a small busi­ness­es that has ben­e­fit­ted from Re­pub­lic Bank.

Spe­cial­is­ing in skin­care items and unique can­dles, own­er Bal­raj Bas­deo said the com­pa­ny is fam­i­ly op­er­at­ed al­so by his wife and daugh­ter.

Bas­deo echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments to Haynes that get­ting the nec­es­sary mon­ey to start a small busi­ness has been one of the biggest hur­dles to over­come.

An­oth­er chal­lenge, he added was hav­ing the forex to im­port raw ma­te­ri­als, which the bank has al­so pro­vid­ed as­sist­ed to the com­pa­ny.

He added that the bank al­so pro­vid­ed valu­able in­sights in­to the world of busi­ness.

“The bank teach­es you how to go about the dy­nam­ics of a small busi­ness, which is al­so im­por­tant,” Bas­deo said.

For in­stance, the RBL SME Toolk­it is a com­pre­hen­sive re­source for SME busi­nes­sown­ers who need and want tips, in­for­ma­tion on busi­ness trends, re­al-time case stud­ies and over­all guid­ance which help them de­vel­op their busi­ness­es.

Gold­en Rootz Ltd and Or­gan­ic with a Pur­pose are just two of the many small busi­ness­es that con­tin­ue to con­tribute to T&T’s econ­o­my.

Michelle John­son, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, SME busi­ness seg­ments at RBL, said the SME Mar­ket­place ini­tia­tive was the first of many planned ini­tia­tives by the bank specif­i­cal­ly fo­cused on bring­ing aware­ness to and sup­port­ing the growth of these busi­ness­es.

“Over the last year, our ef­forts to ral­ly be­hind SMEs have ex­pand­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­cause we be­lieve in you and your po­ten­tial. We know that with the right sup­port you can be the dri­vers of in­no­va­tion and con­tribute to eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty here in T&T,” she said.

For in­stance, in Ju­ly, the bank launched its new mi­cro-loan pack­age aimed at im­prov­ing ac­cess to fi­nance for the MSME busi­ness seg­ment with re­laxed qual­i­fy­ing cri­te­ria for loans up to $100,000.

“We al­so be­lieve in bol­ster­ing the ex­port readi­ness of SMEs and be­cause of this we re­cent­ly re­newed our Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency to con­tin­ue our shared goal to build the ex­port ca­pac­i­ty of busi­ness­es,” John­son fur­ther ex­plained.

In terms of busi­ness ca­pac­i­ty, at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Bankers con­fer­ence, RBL host­ed its SME Train­ing Fo­rum and Mar­ket­place where par­tic­i­pat­ing SMEs ex­plored strate­gies to bol­ster busi­ness growth and re­silience in keep­ing with the theme, “Nur­tur­ing a big busi­ness mind­set for your small busi­ness suc­cess.”

Ad­dress­ing the SMEs that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the in­au­gur­al SME Mar­ket­place John­son as­sured: “At Re­pub­lic, we will con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on and sup­port your suc­cess be­cause we un­der­stand that en­tre­pre­neur­ship is a path that is of­ten un­char­tered and filled with un­cer­tain­ty, but once suc­cess­ful­ly tra­versed, can be found to be bound­less­ly re­ward­ing.”

At the Pres­i­dent’s Din­ner and Awards Cer­e­mo­ny which was host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) two weeks ago, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon al­so hailed the role of small busi­ness­es.

The min­is­ter not­ed that non-en­er­gy ex­ports (in­clu­sive of lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured goods) in­creased by 15 per cent from $15.6 bil­lion in 2021 to $17.9 bil­lion in 2022. Of this ex­ports to Cari­com were val­ued at $5.2 bil­lion, with the top mar­kets be­ing Guyana, Ja­maica, and Bar­ba­dos.

She al­so not­ed that the TTMA, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ex­porTT, has suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed eight trade mis­sions in fis­cal 2023, and is ex­pect­ed to con­duct a fur­ther ten mis­sions in 2024.

Gopee-Scoon has of­ten de­scribed small busi­ness­es as the “back­bone” of T&T’s econ­o­my, con­tribut­ing to more than 30 per cent of the coun­try’s GDP and em­ploy­ing more than 200,000 peo­ple.

“SMEs are the back­bone of our econ­o­my and the ar­chi­tects of our na­tion’s fu­ture. SMEs are in­te­gral not on­ly to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty through job cre­ation, rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and for­eign-ex­change earn­ings, but al­so to sus­tain­ing liveli­hoods and well-be­ing, es­pe­cial­ly among women and youth,” the min­is­ter said dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024 bud­get de­bate in the Sen­ate in Oc­to­ber.

Gopee-Scoon had al­so iden­ti­fied the Moru­ga Agro Pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty as an SME ini­tia­tive “which takes ad­van­tage of the strong agro-base of our do­mes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and is an apt in­dus­tri­al re­sponse to food se­cu­ri­ty, which is a pri­or­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment.”

Fur­ther, she said Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing ef­forts to in­crease op­por­tu­ni­ties for fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs through ini­tia­tives such as the SheTrades Hub.

This plat­form, Gopee-Scoon con­tin­ued, has over 700 women reg­is­tered on it.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has al­so not­ed that “84 per cent of the 158 man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies that re­ceived for­eign ex­change from EX­IM­Bank are SMEs.”