De­spite a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic cli­mate, en­tre­pre­neurs in Tu­na­puna and the sur­round­ing ar­eas are be­ing en­cour­aged to pri­ori­tise in­no­va­tion and ex­pan­sion to re­main com­pet­i­tive.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of Pat & Max Ltd’s new fa­cil­i­ty at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate on Tues­day, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Melis­sa Sen­house un­der­scored the im­por­tance of con­tin­u­ous growth in a volatile busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

“If you’re not ex­pand­ing and grow­ing, then you’re dy­ing,” Sen­house said.

“There’s noth­ing called stand­ing still. If you’re stand­ing still, you’re dy­ing. So you have to con­tin­u­ous­ly grow and evolve for you to be able to move for­ward and to sur­vive.”

Sen­house, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (GT­CIC) for the 2020–2022 term, said her com­pa­ny’s re­lo­ca­tion re­flects a de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy to scale op­er­a­tions and adapt to chang­ing mar­ket de­mands.

“For 40 years or so, we have been in the Tu­na­puna area, and what start­ed to hap­pen is that we evolved, of course, as with all busi­ness­es, and we need­ed more space, so we went look­ing specif­i­cal­ly for an area that we could turn in­to our own, and that’s here,” she said.

Orig­i­nal­ly fo­cused on pro­duc­ing com­pa­ny iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, Pat & Max Ltd lat­er ex­pand­ed in­to tra­di­tion­al print­ery ser­vices. How­ev­er, de­clin­ing de­mand for pa­per-based prod­ucts has forced the com­pa­ny to piv­ot to­wards more mod­ern so­lu­tions.

“For ex­am­ple, busi­ness cards about five to 10 years ago, that would have been our main­stay. Now that’s not so right now, be­cause peo­ple are go­ing with the NFC (near field com­mu­ni­ca­tion) cards. They want QR codes and all this good stuff. So we’ve ac­tu­al­ly start­ed to shift a lit­tle bit,” Sen­house ex­plained.

The com­pa­ny has since in­cor­po­rat­ed dig­i­tal and cus­tomised of­fer­ings, in­clud­ing laser en­grav­ing and QR code-en­abled prod­ucts, as part of its di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy.

“With re­spect to our laser-en­grav­ing items, we have start­ed to in­tro­duce QR code key chains, as well as the mugs that you will see to­day. We’ve im­ple­ment­ed the QR codes on all those things. So now we’ve just been putting QR codes on every­thing,” she said.

Sen­house added that the com­pa­ny has al­so seen strong growth in la­bel pro­duc­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly among small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

“We ac­tu­al­ly start­ed to do la­bels and ban­ners in about 2021–2022, right? And la­bels have re­al­ly tak­en off for us. We ac­tu­al­ly do more la­bels than ban­ners for a num­ber of cus­tomers. Be­cause one of the things is we cater for small and medi­um busi­ness­es, so you have a cus­tomer who might want, let’s say, about 100 or 200 la­bels. They don’t want 1,000 or 10,000 la­bels, so they could come to us, and we’re able to fa­cil­i­tate that.”

While re­lo­cat­ing from Tu­na­puna, Sen­house said the com­pa­ny re­mains com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing its con­nec­tion with cus­tomers in the area and be­lieves there is still strong po­ten­tial for busi­ness growth.

“The busi­ness has evolved. You’re see­ing a lot of new busi­ness­es pop­ping up in Tu­na­puna. We’ve seen a lot of new busi­ness­es pop­ping up in Tu­na­puna,” she said.

She not­ed that while some busi­ness­es have closed in re­cent years, new en­ter­pris­es con­tin­ue to emerge, sig­nalling re­silience with­in the com­mer­cial land­scape.

“So, com­ing from COVID, we’ve had a lot of busi­ness­es clos­ing down. But at the same speed, you’re see­ing new busi­ness­es ap­pear­ing. And I mean, if you look at the Tu­na­puna area and check the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co area in gen­er­al, you’re see­ing a num­ber of busi­ness­es ex­pand­ing,” she said.

“They are be­ing filled. So that means that peo­ple are tak­ing that chance. They are recog­nis­ing that, you know what, yes, the econ­o­my, it might have a lit­tle down­turn now, but if you in­vest now, you’re go­ing to be prepar­ing for the fu­ture.”

GT­CIC pres­i­dent Ra­mon Gre­go­rio echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, not­ing that busi­ness­es must adapt to shift­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and evolv­ing mar­ket dy­nam­ics.

“We have to chal­lenge busi­ness own­ers, whether it’s in San Juan, whether it’s in Cen­tral, to be more in­no­v­a­tive. It’s not busi­ness as usu­al. We’re not play­ing the same play­ing field that we did 5–10, 15 years ago. So we, I think it’s a good de­vel­op­ment for the coun­try, and Tu­na­puna just has to fall in line and take pat­tern and take stock of what types of busi­ness­es are suc­cess­ful in this pe­ri­od, and per­haps try to dri­ve en­tre­pre­neurs in­to that par­tic­u­lar space,” Gre­go­rio said.

He em­pha­sised the need for en­tre­pre­neurs to iden­ti­fy mar­ket gaps and cap­i­talise on emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sec­tors show­ing sus­tained de­mand.

“Whether it’s through dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy or just sim­ple brick and mor­tar type es­tab­lish­ments, they are prof­itable. You see food and the food es­tab­lish­ments sort of pick­ing up all over the place, with food parks all over the coun­try now. So food is def­i­nite­ly one of the av­enues that per­sons could ex­plore,” he said.

“There are al­so op­por­tu­ni­ties for them to spin off. For the per­sons who cre­ate the prod­ucts to go in­to food, the op­por­tu­ni­ties are there. So what is hap­pen­ing in San Juan and Cen­tral is re­al­ly a les­son for all of us to learn.”

Gre­go­rio al­so point­ed to broad­er struc­tur­al chal­lenges af­fect­ing the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing pol­i­cy ad­just­ments, glob­al eco­nom­ic pres­sures, and op­er­a­tional con­straints.

“The past year has been one of ad­just­ment. Ob­vi­ous­ly, a new gov­ern­ment is com­ing in­to play, so busi­ness own­ers have had to make ad­just­ments, look at the poli­cies that the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to im­ple­ment, and re­al­ly see how it fits in­to run­ning our busi­ness from a day-to-day per­spec­tive,” he said.

“It has been a chal­lenge glob­al­ly, ob­vi­ous­ly, a lot of glob­al shocks to the geopo­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. So it re­al­ly falls to the busi­ness own­er in 2026 to be more in­no­v­a­tive, to use dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy per­haps a bit more, to use dif­fer­ent meth­ods of pro­mot­ing busi­ness. It cer­tain­ly calls for a lot more syn­er­gy in terms of busi­ness­es team­ing up to­geth­er to be able to put out prod­ucts and ser­vices, but cer­tain­ly from a man­u­fac­tur­ing stand­point, they’re hav­ing a lot of chal­lenges.”

He added that long-stand­ing is­sues such as VAT re­funds, cus­toms de­lays, and ship­ping dis­rup­tions con­tin­ue to weigh on busi­ness­es, and called for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.

“Of course, there are is­sues with cus­toms. They have is­sues with the VAT re­funds and so on. So the gov­ern­ment has an up­hill bat­tle over the next four years in terms of mak­ing the en­vi­ron­ment and the ease of do­ing busi­ness in T&T bet­ter. It has been a chal­lenge, and as gov­ern­ments come, gov­ern­ments go,” Gre­go­rio said.

“So I’m re­al­ly hop­ing the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to meet with the busi­ness sec­tor and con­tin­ues to con­sult to be able to get fea­si­ble al­ter­na­tives and work on how to live to­geth­er and not in a vac­u­um. Be­cause with this type of en­vi­ron­ment, it re­al­ly calls for an all-hands-on-deck ap­proach.”

De­spite the chal­lenges, Gre­go­rio not­ed that im­prove­ments in se­cu­ri­ty—dri­ven by ini­tia­tives such as the Ea­gle Eye project and on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween law en­force­ment and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty—have pro­vid­ed some en­cour­age­ment for the Tu­na­puna com­mer­cial sec­tor.