Rapheal John-Lall

Start­ing a busi­ness with $100 is no easy ac­com­plish­ment, but hard works pays off, said Brent Halls, di­rec­tor, Kings and Queens Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Dis­trib­ut­ing Com­pa­ny.

"My wife and I start­ed off with $100. We used to work as wait­ers; we used to earn ex­tra mon­ey off tips. My wife's fa­ther used to make pep­per at home and sell it to friends and neigh­bours. Af­ter we start­ed sell­ing to small­er shops and par­lours and small­er busi­ness­es."

Halls spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian last week on the open­ing day of the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), which ran from June 12 to 15 at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

To­day, Halls is the own­er of a suc­cess­ful busi­ness that com­pa­ny that pro­duces bot­tled sea­son­ings and pep­per and sells to su­per­mar­kets and whole­salers.

Around 2004, the busi­ness start­ed to ex­pand.

"When we were op­er­at­ing in Laven­tille, it was un­der my fa­ther-in-law's house," Halls said. "Then the neigh­bours start­ed to com­plain when we were pro­cess­ing the pep­per at nights be­cause they would get sick and start­ed sneez­ing and oth­er ail­ments. We had to move."

By 2009 they moved op­er­a­tions to O'Meara Road, Ari­ma.

"We built a small fac­to­ry there. We got a loan from Re­pub­lic Bank for $100,000. The loan came in parts. I have had a re­la­tion­ship with this bank for many years and there was no prob­lem to get the loan. I have an ex­cel­lent re­la­tion­ship with them," Halls said.

"We used it for the over­drafts, we al­so used part of it for new equip­ment and com­ple­tion of the fac­to­ry in Ari­ma."

Halls said he was trained by dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions.

"I re­ceived train­ing from the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) to make the prod­uct where it is to­day. They guid­ed us in terms of the know-how and un­der­stand­ing the in­dus­try. They were like a back­bone," he said.

Pro­duc­tion

Halls spoke about pro­duc­tion process.

"We make pep­per sauce and reg­u­lar sea­son­ing, in­clud­ing geera sea­son­ing and lime sea­son­ing. We are al­so look­ing at man­u­fac­tur­ing lo­cal toma­to ketchup. We are do­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with lo­cal farm­ers for this and it is in the pipeline. Right now we la­bel by hand and we bot­tle by hand and em­ploy three work­ers."

Halls wants to sup­ply all of T&T.

"We sell a pre­mi­um prod­uct and they pay the price for it. My ma­jor com­peti­tor brands are Chief and Ma­touk's. They have been in the busi­ness for years. Some peo­ple think all sea­son­ings are the same, but that is not the case. We do sam­pling with the larg­er su­per­mar­kets, so peo­ple get to taste our prod­ucts. Our sea­son­ing is 100 per cent nat­ur­al sea­son­ing."

He said oth­er sea­son­ings on the mar­ket "wa­ter down" their prod­uct.

"So they put four gal­lons of wa­ter, they add colour­ing, they mix it, they add starch and get a mix­ture. But it would not be as rich as our nat­ur­al sea­son­ings as they are break­ing it down. So it is more prof­itable for them to do that," he said.

Halls said the com­pa­ny sells the 750ml bot­tles of sea­son­ing for $16.

"It is then sold on some su­per­mar­ket shelves at $20. For larg­er su­per­mar­kets, like Hi-Lo, it would be sold for an even high­er price," he said.

TIC or­gan­is­ers saw the "po­ten­tial" of his com­pa­ny and in­vit­ed him to ex­hib­it.

"We got a call from Trinidad Ex­port Com­pa­ny and they told us our prod­uct is up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and they will help us if we wish to get in­to the ex­port busi­ness. We are in talks with them now. Even when we break in­to mar­kets out­side of T&T, we must main­tain those mar­kets," Halls said.

Halls said he wants to ex­port, but is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with sup­pli­ers.

"We man­u­fac­ture about 30 cas­es of sea­son­ing a day and there are 24 bot­tles in a case. The prob­lem is that we have dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting sup­plies. We want to ex­port to the world and want to be like brand names, like Kraft, but we have prob­lems with sup­plies."

He said the com­pa­ny has a sup­pli­er in Paramin, but sup­plies fall short due to the rapid growth of the busi­ness.

"We have now de­cid­ed to bring in oth­er sup­pli­ers from Ari­ma to San­gre Grande. We are ask­ing them now to plant the sea­son­ing and pep­per for us."

"It is a big step for us, but me must get ready for the next stage."

Halls of­fered this ad­vice to oth­er small and medi­um-sized busi­ness own­ers: "You must en­joy what you are do­ing. You must have a vi­sion and an­nu­al tar­gets and bench­marks."