A young entrepreneur is on a mission to change the ‘basic’ style of furniture to one which is more appealing and creatively made.
Twenty-four-year-old Clinton Samuels of Lot 132 D’Urban Backlands, Georgetown, last week told Stabroek News that his business emerged from a passion for furniture-making, using sustainable materials.
“So the idea of the business came about with me wanting to create comfortable and affordable furniture for customers in the furniture sector and also give them quality work… along with the uniqueness of the furniture and bring something different… so it started out with a love for furniture.”
Samuels disclosed that his business which is called, COBBECC Vision, has been around since 2018 and that the name is an acronym derived from his parents’ and siblings’ names.
According to the craftsman, his furniture is made from locally sustainable materials. “…So we use locally sourced materials like fabric…we use kiln-dried crab wood, we use locust, silverballi, omaballi, and pine wood, depending on the customer’s preference… that’s what we mostly use to build customers furniture… everything when it comes to furniture such as chairs, tables, kitchen cupboards, wardrobe we do.”
The entrepreneur recently took the first prize in a competition called ‘The Pitch Competition’ which was organised by the Decade for People of African Descent Assembly-Guyana (IDPADA-G).
He was awarded the sum of $500,000 to help in the further development of his business. Samuels said that the money will go towards purchasing a foam shredder machine.
“So I have 40 designs of new furniture to bring to the market, but I wanted to start out with 6, in order to do that, the grant will actually go to buying a machine which is the Chip-Foam machine to help…in the factory we have foam that we would use and small pieces would leave back, instead of throwing it away as waste we would try to chip it up and make chipped-foam for the pillows and so on.”
The man who originally hails from Mabaruma in Region One said that his new collection which is called ‘Bloom’ will be launched soon and he hopes to further bring out his creativity to the people of Guyana.
