Last weekend’s EXPO 50 event at the Giftland Mall organised by fashion designer, Sonia Noel, to mark her 50th birthday served as a pointed reminder that Guyana is bursting at the seams with women of entrepreneurial vision who are still to attract the market attention that they deserve. It will take a great deal more institutional support from both the state, the mainstream Business Support Organizations and the banking sector to help these women ‘graduate from the culture of ‘hustle’ which, in many instances, has shaped their existence, to the level of recognition and accomplishment which their efforts merit.
EXPO 50 was designed to afford a number of still emerging women-run businesses, the opportunity to make pointed statements to a market, much larger, in many cases, than those to which they had grown accustomed. The event benefitted from a limited if decidedly lively area on the first floor of the Giftland Mall – an institution that has demonstrated an impressive ability to keep patrons coming.
The products on display ranged from agro-processed fruit and vegetables which are now finding a pleasing measure of acceptance in local food outlets, restaurant kitchens and on dinner tables, to clothing and cosmetics and jewellery. The available evidence suggests that these women-run businesses have, over time, raised their game considerably, not just in terms of product quality and attendant consumer appeal, but also in terms of packaging and presentation which, for many years, had been the Achilles heel of local product promotion.
These advancements amount to nothing short of an immensely pleasing tribute to the discipline of these women, some of whom began their journeys without the benefit of one iota of mentorship or professional training. Through curiosity, observation, and dint of perseverance, they have become seized with an awareness of what, these days, is the mountain which they have to climb to bring their products to a pleasing level of local and international market acceptance.
Expo 50 bared the range of fashion, body care, cosmetics, condiments, and creative art, that now forms the backbone of a determined gender-reinforced clique that ‘cries out’ for far more official and popular support than it gets at this time. What encourages them is that they have been able, nonetheless, on account of what manifestly is their determination, to go forward to ‘hang in there,’ as we say in Guyana.
Perhaps above everything else, two things stood out at Expo 50. First, there was the seeming sense of market acceptance that these women are gradually acquiring. Increasingly, numbers of Guyanese would appear to be in the process of extending to these emerging businesswomen, a vote of confidence that has been slow in coming, but which, latterly, is beginning to make an encouragingly prominent appearance.
Noteworthy too, at EXPO 50, was the camaraderie that was evident in the warmth of the interaction amongst the group, many of whose products are in direct competition with each other. It is as if they are pleasingly aware that there is the promise of them all going places together.
