The chance encounter between Leisa Gibson and Melba Lagadou at the Sonia Noel-staged Women in Business forum at the Pegasus Hotel in 2015 is now paying dividends for the two Guyanese businesswomen beyond anything that they might have expected when they first met each other.
Both had decided to participate in the event in order to determine whether there was anything that they could take away from being there that might add value to their respective enterprises. They both found what, since then, has been not just a close friendship but also a sense of trust in each other, more than enough to cause them to venture into a business partnership.
Leisa is the Proprietrix of a Salon and Beauty Supplies establishment, a six year-old establishment situated at 66 Mitchell Street, Pattensen, Turkeyen, East Coast Demerara. The services of her Salon are available by appointment, a circumstance that affords her the time to pursue her other passion, the use of locally acquired ingredients to manufacture natural healing and image-enhancing products. Her line of products includes a Sugar Scrub, Scalp Conditioner, Hair Growth and a range of eighteen types of soaps.
Over time, Leisa has worked her way towards becoming a reputable service provider in the urban beauty and natural products sector though she concedes that the challenge of remaining competitive reposes primarily in creating adequate marketing and distribution openings in what continues to grow into an increasingly competitive sector. Social media, she says, have been a
considerable asset though she believes that a physical distribution outlet, not an inexpensive venture in Georgetown these days, performs an image-enhancing function that can add significant value to her business.
Melba Lagadu is a ‘country girl,’ an engagingly garrulous personality, with roots at Ikaru, Canje. Under the Genuine Naturally Fresh brand name she manufactures a range of sauces and syrups including Sweet & Sour Barbecue Sauce, Organic Vinegar, Lime Syrup, Lime Curd, Trail Mix and Energy Bars. While she concedes that the current global focus on physical nourishment has strongly influenced her choice of product line, she wanted consumers to know that she is also a craftswoman and that her interest in craft remains undiminished.
Going forward, however, Melba says, she is focused on pressing part of her family’s ancestral lands into the cultivation of such fruit and other materiel that she will need to further grow her fruit concentrate business.
Both Lisa and Melba are seized of the importance of broadening their respective customer support bases and it is from this singular desire that their collective business venture has derived. The business partnership, they both say, had its genesis in the cultivation of a “sisterhood” that derived from an admiration and respect for each other’s ambitions coupled with a belief that they could trust each other sufficiently to find a way to cultivate a worthwhile business partnership.
The idea of working together would appear to have derived from what both women felt was the need to refine their respective marketing strategies to afford their products a measure of market attention beyond what their separate product promotion pursuits allowed for. Their now close friendship was forged to a large extent through their participation in international expos including events in Miami and Suriname.
But for the uproarious intervention of the covid-19 pandemic the two had planned to travel to Antigua to test the market there for their respective products.
Over time Lisa and Melba felt the increasing need to lift their production promotion levels beyond their respective marketing-by-social-media pursuits. The way forward, they finally agreed, reposed in the creation of an actual outlet where their products could be touched and tested and where they could build a customer base that went beyond the confines of the virtual option. Both women felt the need for the creation of a facility that would offer their products a far greater measure of public display.
Launched on April 24th last Mel-Leisa Organic Products & Beauty Supplies is the outcome of what had been a diligent search for a location at which to ‘put down’ actual marketing roots. It is, they both agree, a ‘step up’ from the distance of virtual communication. Melba says that the Lot 6 Alexander street Kitty premises housing the outlet affords the two women an opportunity to establish direct links with potential customers, creating face-to-face interpersonal connections which virtual marketing does not afford.
Going forward the two have focused not just on strengthening links with their long-standing customers but also with targeting new ones.
It falls to Lisa, the urban-based partner, to oversee yje operations of Mel-Leisa’s on a day to day basis. These days, she says, she must ‘double up,’ since she must keep her appointments at her Beauty Parlor.
Comfortable in both their friendship and their business partnership the two women consult constantly on how they can further consolidate their existing joint venture pursuit. Both believe that the synergies that have derived from working together have to do with the fact that their respective enterprises both focus on health and beauty. They both believe that the products that they provide complement each other.
Nor do Leisa and Melba rule out the possibility of further growth in their existing business relationship. Both say that they continue to search, in their respective ways, for building further business bridges. They insist, however, that this will not deflect them from the collaborative path that has brought them this far.
Mel-Leisa’s can be reached on telephone number 621-9972
