When last South African au­thor and in­vestor Vusi Them­bek­wayo came to T&T to share his in­sight on busi­ness strat­e­gy, his pre­sen­ta­tion at the Edge Lead­er­ship Se­ries co­in­cid­ed with the bud­get day on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

This year, the event has been tied to the Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTMA) Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion 2025.

The sem­i­nar, set to be held on Ju­ly 17, 2025, is be­ing viewed as a key op­por­tu­ni­ty to have Them­bek­wayo, the founder of The School of Scale , and sev­er­al oth­er cru­cial busi­ness­men and stake­hold­ers share mes­sages with small and medi­um-sized busi­ness en­ter­pris­es con­cern­ing wider de­vel­op­ment.

In a news re­lease an­nounc­ing the sem­i­nar, the Edge team ex­plained the busi­ness ed­u­ca­tion pan­el head­lined by the South African busi­ness coach “aims to pro­vide a plat­form for knowl­edge-shar­ing and di­a­logue on the chal­lenges T&T and Caribbean busi­ness­es face in scal­ing to serve a glob­al mar­ket and how these can be nav­i­gat­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly in a con­stant­ly shift­ing eco­nom­ic cli­mate.”

The re­lease stressed fur­ther, “At the Edge Lead­er­ship Se­ries, we are pas­sion­ate about em­pow­er­ing Caribbean busi­ness lead­ers at the edge of in­no­va­tion and trans­for­ma­tion through ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing con­fer­ences, work­shops, and net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with the best glob­al busi­ness minds.”

The Edge Lead­er­ship said the se­ries is geared to­wards cre­at­ing a com­mon meet­ing ground for the key play­ers in busi­ness, from ma­jor con­glom­er­ates and pol­i­cy mak­ers, to SMEs.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the team is ex­pec­tant the event will fa­cil­i­tate high-val­ue con­nec­tions and knowl­edge trans­fer among minds from across the busi­ness spec­trum, build­ing the re­gion’s in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal.

The team be­hind the event is hope­ful that con­nect­ing the sem­i­nar to the 2025 TIC—a mul­ti-sec­toral trade show which brings to­geth­er busi­ness­es from over 35 coun­tries across the Caribbean, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca and the wider in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket—will cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for Caribbean busi­ness­es and in­no­va­tors to ac­cess glob­al thought-lead­ers and ex­perts and share unique ideas.

One such idea is to change the mind­set of SMEs in terms of “chal­leng­ing the idea that big busi­ness and SMEs must speak dif­fer­ent lan­guages.”

Them­bek­wayo’s pre­sen­ta­tion is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a glob­al con­text, while not ig­nor­ing the steps re­quired for busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

The Edge team ex­plained the South African au­thor will speak on prob­lems many small busi­ness­es face in the be­gin­ning, and shar­ing tips by which they can solve spe­cif­ic lo­cal prob­lems with lim­it­ed re­sources.

He is al­so ex­pect­ed to share in­sight to busi­ness­es con­cern­ing stay­ing flex­i­ble, man­ag­ing cash flow, and un­der­stand­ing cus­tomer needs re­main valu­able and can give busi­ness­es an edge when ex­pand­ing in­to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Them­bek­wayo is al­so set to dis­cuss break­ing bar­ri­ers to ex­port as his pre­sen­ta­tion is set to dis­cuss com­mon chal­lenges busi­ness­es face when en­ter­ing for­eign mar­kets such as meet­ing ex­port stan­dards, se­cur­ing fi­nanc­ing or for­eign ex­change.

The lat­ter is the cur­rent is­sue for most T&T busi­ness­es, as well as strate­gies for man­ag­ing ship­ping and cus­toms, which in it­self has been a sig­nif­i­cant re­cent chal­lenge for lo­cal busi­ness­es.

The for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion, and the need for man­u­fac­tur­ers to de­vel­op ex­port mar­kets, was stressed in par­tic­u­lar by TTMA CEO Dr Mahin­dra Ramesh Ramdeen in a pro­mo­tion­al video for the event.

“The on­ly way I could get for­eign ex­change is to rob Fort Knox, or to ex­port,’ said Ramdeen in the clip, “There are some peren­ni­al is­sues the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor face. Top of the line might be the avail­abil­i­ty for­eign ex­change in T&T, be­cause when you’re a man­u­fac­tur­er in Trinidad, by ex­ten­sion, you’re al­so an ex­porter, and we don’t pro­duce our raw ma­te­ri­als in T&T, so we have to im­port our raw ma­te­r­i­al. And to im­port our raw ma­te­r­i­al, you need to earn for­eign ex­change.”

He said many man­u­fac­tur­ers in T&T need to look be­yond the lo­cal mar­ket, but his ex­pe­ri­ence has shown him that those busi­ness­es need­ed fur­ther guid­ance to do so.

“It’s im­por­tant for them that you want to grow your busi­ness, you want to grow your op­er­a­tion, but you can’t man­u­fac­ture more to stock­pile in­ven­to­ry.

“You can’t man­u­fac­ture more to sell in T&T. You need big­ger mar­kets. So we ad­vo­cate for them. We work with them. We take them to trade mis­sions. We take them to trade shows.

“We bring buy­ers to come to meet the man­u­fac­tur­ers, so they could have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sell to these buy­ers in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket,” said Ramdeen.

“Once you start think­ing about ex­port­ing, a num­ber of fac­tors come in­to play, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, qual­i­ty stan­dards, those things come in­to play. So we help them in that re­gard. We al­so pro­vide them with op­por­tu­ni­ties for grant fund­ing and cer­tain av­enues to build their ca­pac­i­ty with their stan­dards and qual­i­fi­ca­tions, for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for en­ter­ing cer­tain coun­tries. We help them with ex­port plans, their fi­nanc­ing pro­grammes. Those are the kind of things we help them with,” added the TTMA CEO.

Ramdeen not­ed that many lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers of­ten un­der­es­ti­mat­ed what is re­quired to en­ter for­eign mar­kets, and his team has been work­ing to change that mind­set among the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor of T&T.

The TTMA CEO said, “Gen­er­al­ly, the ma­jor mis­takes I see com­pa­nies make is that they feel that what­ev­er they’re do­ing in Trinidad and they have a good prod­uct, they could just repli­cate that and ex­port it with­out do­ing the pre­req­ui­site mar­ket in­tel­li­gence in the coun­try. That’s a ma­jor mis­take they tend to make.

“A lot of them don’t do their re­search. A lot of them feel that what they do, what they pro­duce do­mes­ti­cal­ly, they could just trans­pose that to ex­port prod­uct. They don’t un­der­stand, if you’re go­ing in­to a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket, you need to un­der­stand the cul­tur­al dy­nam­ics.

“You need to do re­search to un­der­stand what are the pre­req­ui­sites to en­ter in­to the mar­ket. Some­times your la­belling stan­dard would have to change. Some­times un­der­stand­ing the cul­tur­al dy­nam­ics is im­por­tant.”

The busi­ness sem­i­nar will al­so fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tions from Bernar­do Re­que­na, di­rec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tive, T&T, CAF De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and Langston Roach, founder and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Langston Roach In­dus­tries Ltd.