At 33, and 18 years after harvesting honey for the first time, Devon Gilead is still seeking a breakthrough from his present position as a micro-business owner in the bee products industry. Nature Gift, the brand name given to his products, is still, after a decade, a fledgling entity, beset by the customary cottage industry challenges and, as is customary in the local small business sector, lacking in institutional support beyond the sweat and effort of personal initiative.
Stabroek Business met Gilead at last Monday’s Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI)-organized packaging and labelling seminar for local producers. He revealed that he and his wife run their operation from Islington, East Bank Berbice. Their product base includes beeswax, hairdressing pomade, honey, honey-roasted nuts, natural soaps and beeswax candles. The manufactured products are made mostly by hand, the enterprise not having grown sufficiently to acquire more sophisticated machinery.
Nature Gift soaps, Gilead says were perfected after a long period of trial and error and are offered in a range of shapes and colours. The drawback is that the soaps are still without packaging. Needless to say the proprietor, having examined the imports available on the supermarket shelves is well aware of how far adrift he is of the competition. From the standpoint of affordability, imported packaging is off the table. Gilead is hoping to land the support of some local entity that might be willing to help him secure an acceptable level of local packaging so that his products might at least find more favour on the domestic market.
Nature Gift’s wax-based hairdressing pomade, Gilead says, is its best seller. The product benefits, it seems, from a continually growing beauty industry. The women of Islington and other nearby communities are his best customers.
With underdeveloped product presentation having slowed down Nature Gift’s march towards reliable commercial outlets the business of distribution is limited to manufacturing to fill modest orders that place constraints on profit margins.
Much of the past 10 years has been spent simply making a living and as Gilead explains the twin preoccupations of turning out goods and addressing product development don’t go well together. Here, it has to be said, that both government of the private sector have missed the bus; both having failed to create and sustain even a single institution with the capacity to support small and micro businesses in the manufacturing sector.
At last Monday’s product presentation seminar hosted by the GCCI and delivered by the Jamaican company Prism, Gilead raised the issue of appropriate packaging for his candles in the event that he might wish to consider the US market. The response provided him with insights into the journey that he still has to make if his products are to become export-ready.
He understands just where he is positioned in relation to where he wants to be, but Gilead does not mind entertaining the sensation of being able to walk before he has quite learned to creep.
