One doesn’t have to look too hard to discover that there are significant (and growing) numbers of young Guyanese women – some of them still in their teens – who, these days, are drawn to one entrepreneurial pursuit or another. They too have developed a sense of the new-found opportunities that derive from the recent stark shift in the country’s economic focus. In their own way they would very much appear to have embraced a ‘this is our time to shine’ approach to storming the ramparts of entrepreneurship.
Much of it is decidedly modest. They are backing their passions, sinking what resources they have into their pursuits. Their respective support bases are, frequently, the backing of family and friends, both restrained and boisterous cheerleaders who unreservedly back their passion and their discipline and have been moved to motivate them.
Some of these ‘try out’ entrepreneurial pursuits have been groomed from the level of hobbies, skills-related ones that had been developed in ‘earlier lives’ and, which, these days, appear to have yielded potential for profit.
Interestingly, not even what, in some instances have been preoccupations with finding ‘nine to fives’ or with academia have suppressed these ‘hobbies,’ so that there are, these days, quite a few young women simultaneously doing responsible salaried jobs or seeking Degrees and Diplomas whilst pushing through with hobbies-turned-business ‘hustles.
If you had had the time and opportunity during the recently executed Small Business Week staged by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) in collaboration with GTT, it would have been difficult not to notice the fast-growing proliferation of young women who are applying themselves to serious well thought out entrepreneurial pursuits designed to target particular markets. The young ‘women entrepreneurs’ themselves have, by now, to a considerable extent developed and refined the product presentation and marketing skills designed to ignite customer appeal. Much of this has been self-taught. Perhaps, more significantly, they have developed a ‘knack’ for ‘hunting down’ and capturing the demands of the market.
On the whole, once one had been following the ‘trails’ of these young women over a period of time, it would have been difficult not to notice the incremental advancement in their product promotion pursuits, paraded largely through creative product presentation coupled with other self-invented ‘twists’ in their approach to marketing designed to further enhance levels of customer appeal.
In the absence of resources with which to match the marketing strategies of the ‘high street high fliers,’ they have attached themselves to ‘Pop Up’ Shops, ‘inventions’ that offer convivial ‘homes’ for their products, thus removing the necessity for the punishing exertions that apply in the kind of ‘flat foot’ hustling undertaken by the hardy breed of conventional street vendors.
“Pop Up’ Shops afford what, sometimes, are the smallest of shelf spaces for products that can fit those spaces. If they are not much, they are a start, a ‘high street’ address and telephone number, a place where their products can benefit from some measure of ‘strategic’ exposure and where transactions can be done in a controlled environment. ‘Pop Up’ shops provide a convivial environment in which women hinged by a common interest in one entrepreneurial pursuit or another can begin to undertake the pursuit of their individual goals in spaces where their goods and services are afforded the facility of pleasing presentation. They allow the vendor to pursue the option of some measure of conventional marketing.
All of this, of course, raises the question as to whether government might not be doing the small business pursuits of women a power of good if they were to put resources into the establishment of strategically placed ‘Pop Up’ Shops. Having done that, however, government must, straightaway, step away, ceding control to non-state institutions (like the GCCI, for example) that were created to further entrepreneurial interests. It can, of course, hardly be overstated that once these ‘institutions’ are established and handed over to the relevant Chambers of Commerce or other private sector groups, government should have nothing to do with their operating rules and procedures.
The creation of convivial state-subsidized, across-the-country spaces that can serve as start-up locations for emerging women-led small businesses, is, not at all, an inappropriate manner in which to spend some of our ‘oil money.’
There can be little doubt that were the costs associated with starting modest women-led businesses in Guyana more affordable, then that would open the way for more women who are sufficiently confident in the marketability of their goods and services to take the plunge. Needless to say, it makes every sense to have initiatives like this driven by a collective state/private sector ‘engine.’
Whether, of course, government can simply provide the tools to support private sector empowerment and ‘walk away,’ is another. The practice here in Guyana has been to never fail to attach what, frequently, are unhelpful caveats to state-funded creations that are intended for the furtherance of entrepreneurial pursuits. There is no shortage of evidence of the damage that this has done to the growth of the small business sector.
Whether or not government has learnt enough from the various instances of wrong-footedness that has stunted the growth of the small business sector is unclear. Truth be told, wholly state-controlled bodies that have responsibility for key matters that have to do with the growth of the small business sector have no place in a country that is in the process of growing its economy. The available evidence suggests that this has to change.
