It start­ed in 1983 as a small fam­i­ly-run hard­ware lo­cat­ed at a busy in­ter­sec­tion in Cou­va.

Then in 2018, some 35 years lat­er, its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jaio Ramkissoon de­cid­ed to get in­to the busi­ness of man­u­fac­tur­ing PVC pipes.

This was no pipe dream.

As New Wave Mar­ket­ing Ltd is now con­sid­ered one of the lead­ing medi­um-sized man­u­fac­tur­ers in this coun­try.

In fact, the com­pa­ny has been hailed by Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon for its con­tri­bu­tion to T&T’s econ­o­my.

New Wave Mar­ket­ing al­so won the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTMA) Man­u­fac­tur­er of the Year in the Medi­um cat­e­go­ry for 2018.

“First we start­ed as a hard­ware, and then we went sole­ly in­to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of plumb­ing. That would have been around 2004 or 2005,” di­rec­tor Emil Ramkissoon told the Busi­ness Guardian as he re­count­ed the com­pa­ny’s growth.

“And then in 2018 we had the need to shift in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing as we saw there was no more growth for the com­pa­ny as be­ing a dis­trib­u­tor,” he said.

Ramkissoon said an in­vest­ment was made in­to ma­chin­ery to en­sure that the com­pa­ny was able to make the tran­si­tion.

“And then we grew in­to ex­ports grad­u­al­ly and that brings us to to­day,” Ramkissoon said.

To­day New Wave Mar­ket­ing is a force to be reck­oned with.

The com­pa­ny has al­ready cap­tured 85 per cent of the lo­cal mar­ket.

And while its roots re­main in Cou­va its reach is now re­gion­al.

“Our ma­jor mar­kets are Ja­maica and St Lu­cia. The plan is to get out there more but ob­vi­ous­ly with the pan­dem­ic bor­ders were closed so we could not en­gage in phys­i­cal meet­ings and net­work­ing and do­ing re­search out­side of T&T,” Ramkissoon said.

“We had to make do with try­ing to cap­ture mar­kets at home but when you get to trav­el and meet peo­ple and re­search and try and pro­cure new cus­tomers I think with the bor­der be­ing opened it will make it eas­i­er,” he said.

Director of New Wave Marketing Emil Ramkissoon

Last year be­fore the pan­dem­ic hit T&T’s shores, New Wave Mar­ket­ing gave Gopee-Scoon a tour of their fa­cil­i­ties.

“It is an ex­em­plary small and medi­um en­ter­prise com­pa­ny that be­gan as a small, fam­i­ly Dis­tri­b­u­tion Com­pa­ny and has grown—mor­ph­ing and adapt­ing to the dif­fer­ent changes in the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment—to be­come a man­u­fac­tur­er and ex­porter,” TTMA’s for­mer pres­i­dent Fran­ka Costel­loe said fol­low­ing that tour.

Costel­loe said the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess was due to a high up-time, run­ning at well be­yond the in­dus­try av­er­age with 80 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

Ramkissoon said while the pan­dem­ic has brought new chal­lenges the pres­sure has not burst New Wave Mar­ket­ing’s pipes.

“To be quite hon­est it has been a chal­lenge but we had to face the chal­lenge, we could not just sit down,” Ramkissoon said.

“You have to keep re­tool­ing to suit the needs. It is chal­leng­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in a pan­dem­ic where things are cost­ly and you don’t have the same rev­enue. You have to go with the tide some­times, but some­times you can’t go with it. So you just have to weigh your op­tions and see what’s best for the busi­ness,” he said.

Ramkissoon said one of the ma­jor chal­lenges New Wave Mar­ket­ing has ex­pe­ri­enced be­cause of the pan­dem­ic was the de­lay in ship­ments of raw ma­te­r­i­al.

“A lot of ship­ments were be­ing de­layed con­stant­ly. The es­ti­mat­ed times of ar­rivals were be­ing re­vised over and over,” he said.

“And that was be­yond our con­trol be­cause some­times a lot of the ship­ments got stuck at trans­ship­ment ports be­cause coun­tries went in­to lock­down and they may come out of the lock­down and by the time the ship reached the next des­ti­na­tion that coun­try was in a lock­down. So there were a lot of de­lays,” Ramkissoon said.

He ex­plained New Wave Mar­ket­ing im­ple­ment­ed var­i­ous health and safe­ty pro­to­cols with­in its fac­to­ry and with­in the dis­tri­b­u­tion ware­house to en­sure cus­tomers and staff were pro­tect­ed against COVID-19.

“We im­ple­ment­ed elec­tron­ic pay­ments. A lot of cus­tomers call in their or­ders so we don’t have to have any phys­i­cal con­tact and we al­so use elec­tron­ic plat­forms for ex­ter­nal and in­ter­nal meet­ings,” Ramkissoon said.

In ad­di­tion to this Ramkissoon said tem­per­a­ture checks are done twice dai­ly, sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions and face masks are pro­vid­ed, and staff are ro­tat­ed reg­u­lar­ly.

“Even though our staff is vac­ci­nat­ed, we can­not let our guard down,” he said.

With a staff of 75 em­ploy­ees New hopes that soon the T&T econ­o­my can be ful­ly re­opened be­cause while the off­tak­ers for its busi­ness like hard­ware stores are opened Ramkissoon un­der­stands it al­so re­quires oth­ers to have dis­pos­able in­come to make the econ­o­my run.

“Re­al­ly and tru­ly yes hard­ware stores are al­lowed to open and con­struc­tion is al­lowed to open but peo­ple aren’t in jobs they don’t have re­sources to spend on house projects and the ba­sic day to day plumb­ing so you will not see the full scale of what busi­ness used to be like, even though we are es­sen­tial we are just ser­vic­ing the es­sen­tials, be­cause peo­ple aren’t spend­ing as they used to spend,” he said.

“The hope right now is to get the coun­try to herd im­mu­ni­ty and to get the econ­o­my opened and al­low peo­ple to get back jobs and be vac­ci­nat­ed and that is the most im­por­tant thing I think right now,” Ramkissoon said

Apart from the com­pa­ny’s progress, Ramkissoon has al­so been mak­ing waves on an in­di­vid­ual lev­el.

Last year he was ap­point­ed to the TTMA’s board.

At 25 years old he is the youngest per­son to ever to be ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion.

With that ap­point­ment, Ramkissoon said he has been able to see some of the chal­lenges fac­ing the in­dus­try as a whole.

“For­eign ex­change still con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge how­ev­er, if you con­tin­ue to grow ex­ports you will see the for­eign ex­change and sit­ting on the board of the TTMA we have the Ex­im bank fa­cil­i­ty that our man­u­fac­tur­ers can utilise,” he said.

Ramkissoon said he sup­ports the TTMA’s goal to dou­ble this coun­try’s ex­ports by 2025.

“There is com­pe­ti­tion out there. So when we dou­ble ex­ports we have to think we are not just com­pet­ing lo­cal­ly we are com­pet­ing re­gion­al­ly and in the West­ern Hemi­sphere,” he said.