Small busi­ness­es as well as re­gion­al ex­hibitors shone at last week’s Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), show­cas­ing their vast ar­ray of prod­ucts.

Host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), TIC has be­come one of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s sig­na­ture events.

From in­tri­cate­ly hand­craft­ed lo­cal­ly made jew­ellery to dasheen punch blend­ed in To­ba­go to Bar­ba­di­an rum cakes; they were all in dis­play en­tic­ing the lo­cal palette, but more im­por­tant­ly at­tract­ing buy­ers to en­sure vi­able trade re­la­tions and po­ten­tial­ly grow­ing the ex­port ca­pac­i­ty of T&T. TIC at­tract­ed 325 booths for the 2024 edi­tion, which was more than last year.

The Busi­ness Guardian vis­it­ed the TIC last Fri­day, speak­ing to lo­cal en­ti­ties as well as busi­ness­es from Bar­ba­dos and St Vin­cent to gar­ner their in­sights on how the TIC has en­abled their suc­cess.

For Ke­ston Pope, founder and own­er of Savour de Isle, a lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing com­pa­ny in the food and bev­er­age in­dus­try, lo­cat­ed in the cen­tre of To­ba­go in Mo­ri­ah, the TIC has helped his en­ter­prise to grow from strength to strength.

Not­ing that his busi­ness con­tin­ues to gain pop­u­lar­i­ty, Pope at­trib­uted this to the hard-work and ded­i­ca­tion of his staff as well the op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed to him by par­tic­i­pat­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly in the TIC which has as­sist­ed in in­creas­ing his cus­tomer base.

Savour de Isle made its first ap­pear­ance in TIC in 2017, and main­tained a pres­ence at the con­ven­tion un­til 2019.

The com­pa­ny again par­tic­i­pat­ed in 2022 and re­turned this year.

“TIC has been in­te­gral in terms of our growth. For ex­am­ple, be­ing in To­ba­go is one mar­ket and then the abil­i­ty to have our prod­ucts in Trinidad is an­oth­er mar­ket and TIC is the plat­form that opened that av­enue,” Pope ex­plained.

Found­ed in 2015 with just three fam­i­ly mem­bers Savour de Isle is now has eight work­ers, cur­rent­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing over 400 to 500 bot­tles per day and serv­ing over 100 out­lets in To­ba­go, as well as with a grow­ing pres­ence in Trinidad.

Of­fer­ings in­clude flavoured milk-drink blends (punch­es), flavoured al­co­holic drink blends (rum creams and rum punch­es), flavoured non-dairy drinks, juice drinks and con­fec­tioner­ies.

Fol­low­ing this year’s TIC, he’s hop­ing to have an even more promi­nent con­sumer pres­ence in Trinidad.

Pope al­so has his eyes set on ex­port­ing his prod­ucts in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as he con­tin­ues to en­sure his fa­cil­i­ty is brought up to glob­al stan­dards.

An­oth­er of the booths vis­it­ed was Cari Pure, whose unique prod­ucts, such as its hi­bis­cus-in­fused hand and body lo­tion, are al­so mak­ing waves.

The lo­cal­ly made, lux­u­ry skin care brand, owned by Den­zel Lam­otte, sources most of its in­puts lo­cal­ly, in­clud­ing co­conut and av­o­ca­do oils.

In its fifth year of op­er­a­tion, Lam­otte shared that his re­tail jour­ney has been suc­cess­ful thus far, adding that his plan is to dom­i­nate the re­tail mar­ket.

“We have a 12-year plan to in­crease our do­mes­tic reach and af­ter that we will be re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Re­gion­al­ly, we will make our way up the is­lands and then we will take it up to north Amer­i­ca,” he de­tailed.

Savour de Isle and Cari Pure are among this coun­try’s nu­mer­ous small en­ti­ties which con­tin­ue to be in­te­gral to T&T’s econ­o­my.

The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (NED­CO) has al­so been do­ing its part nour­ish­ing this de­vel­op­ment.

Ned­co’s chief mar­ket­ing and brand­ing of­fi­cer Col­in Prov­i­dence, who was al­so present at TIC, said its loan fund­ing fa­cil­i­ty and se­ries of train­ing cours­es have tremen­dous­ly helped in this re­gard.

“Cours­es like how to set-up your busi­ness are al­so im­por­tant,” Prov­i­dence said adding, “A lot of our en­tre­pre­neurs have not set-up their busi­ness­es prop­er­ly so when they want to gain ac­cess to for­eign mar­kets they are un­able to do so be­cause they may not have the right cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and clear­ances.”

He not­ed that chal­lenges re­main sen­si­tis­ing and ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple re­gard­ing prop­er busi­ness con­duct.

At the TIC, items from Bar­ba­dos and St Vin­cent were al­so on dis­play as they too are hop­ing to gain fur­ther en­try in the lo­cal mar­ket.

In the case of Bar­ba­dos, John Bayne, own­er of Ba­jan Rum Cakes is ex­cit­ed about the po­ten­tial prospects in T&T and he’s hop­ing to do this with its unique cakes which he de­scribed as a pound cake driz­zled in flavour­ful rum.

Why T&T?

“Trinidad is one of the south­ern coun­tries in the re­gion and this prod­uct was de­signed for the re­gion. So, we start with Trinidad and head up the chain; Grena­da, St Lu­cia, An­tigua, Do­mini­ca so it’s just tim­ing re­al­ly and the launch of the TIC,” Bayne ex­plained.

He al­so shared this was his first time par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­ven­tion

“We have known about TIC for a cou­ple years and then COVID came and then there was the first vir­tu­al show­ing of it. At that time, we were busy build­ing the brand and we thought it was time to bite the bul­let and make the ef­fort and see what was avail­able,” Bayne said, as he added his par­tic­u­lar tar­get mar­ket will be all in­clu­sive from spe­cial­i­ty stores to su­per­mar­kets.

In­vest SVG, the in­vest­ment pro­mo­tions agency for St Vin­cent and the Grenadines was al­so promi­nent at the TIC.

The en­ti­ty, which falls un­der that coun­try’s Min­istry of Fi­nance, Eco­nom­ic Plan­ning, Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, is re­spon­si­ble for at­tract­ing and fa­cil­i­tat­ing lo­cal and for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI).

Na­dine Agard-Juiller­at, di­rec­tor of ex­port mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions, not­ed that In­vest SVG is a reg­u­lar at TIC, stat­ing that both T&T and her home coun­try have sim­i­lar tastes.

Point­ing to the var­i­ous items on dis­play, she said the moringa and gin­ger-in­fused wa­ter for in­stance, is a “strong favourite.”

As in­ter­est con­tin­ues to in­crease in items from both coun­tries, Agard-Juiller­at laud­ed the TTMA for fa­cil­i­tat­ing the con­ven­tion.

“We have an ex­cel­lent re­la­tion­ship with the TIC, so much so that the TTMA at­tend­ed the ‘Every­thing Vin­cy Ex­po’ last year which of­fers the op­por­tu­ni­ty for the re­gion to par­tic­i­pate in our ex­po as well.

“We have a sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship in that our mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies trade off,” she added.

Not too long ago, Hur­ri­cane Beryl hit St Vin­cent and the Grenadines de­mol­ish­ing or dam­ag­ing many of the build­ings.

Oth­er is­lands in the Grenadines arch­i­pel­ago, like Canouan, al­so suf­fered ex­ten­sive dam­age.

The dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects have al­so been ex­tend­ed to trade.

“It’s go­ing to set back those peo­ple who re­ly heav­i­ly on ex­port­ing both raw and agro-pro­cess­ing ma­te­ri­als be­cause when a hur­ri­cane comes in, it doesn’t just take your roof, it takes most of your veg­e­ta­tion.

“For the tourism and agri­cul­ture sec­tors, it’s go­ing to take a lit­tle time for them to catch them­selves and for peo­ple to start man­u­fac­tur­ing again. In ad­di­tion to that, if I have a busi­ness and my work­ers do not have their homes, you have to set­tle these peo­ple first and to make sure they are com­fort­able in their home en­vi­ron­ment be­fore they can come back out. So, it will im­pact labour as well,” Agard-Juiller­at ex­plained.

She is how­ev­er, con­fi­dent that her coun­try­men are re­silient even in the face of im­mense ad­ver­si­ty.