While the Covid-19 pandemic is heavily impacting small businesses, several owners remain optimistic that by making several adjustments, they will survive.
Saying his business has fallen by a staggering 80 percent since the onset of the pandemic, Owner of Barbados Rum Cakes John Bayne remained optimistic that “over time we will build back to where we have come from.”
With tourists making up the majority of the company’s clientele, he disclosed that currently it was working on exporting to its major source market and building a greater e-commerce and door to door platform for the product.
He was speaking as Small Business and Entrepreneurship Minister Kerrie Symmonds, Permanent Secretary Esworth Reid and several senior officials from the ministry toured the No. 4 Balls Plantation facility yesterday morning.
It was the first of four tours slated of Barbados Trust Fund Limited small business clients.
Extending his thanks to Fund Access, which he stressed has been “integral” in the success of Barbados Rum Cakes, Bayne said the company would continue to make the best out of the current situation.
Symmonds highlighted while financing was still a challenge for some small businesses, changing business models were a greater need at this time for others.
“The challenge now is changing the business model to get on to an e-commerce platform, because if the client base that you would have depended on, which would have been the tourists are not getting to you, you now have to find a way of getting to them and to the overseas market. There are technical assistance issues where government must find a way to step in and partner with the small business community.”
“One of them is market intelligence so that you learn more about the overseas markets and the rules of governing trade and accessing those markets, so you are better able to penetrate the market and do what you have to do in accordance with their requirements in terms of standards and so on and that is an area where the Barbados National Standards Institute has pledged its ongoing assistance,” the minister noted.
During the group’s visit to Golden Touch Spa in Maxwell, Owner Tiffanie Nurse highlighted how the facility was now producing its own line of body butters and scrubs for its clientele.
She also spoke on the impact Covid-19 had on the business, especially in terms of getting stock.
“Post-Covid things have gotten a little more difficult as buying stock and getting stock has been a lot harder. We had to import things that once we would have been able to travel to get so the cost of doing business is a lot more, but with good local clients and structure we have been able to make it through to the next round and hopefully we will be able to fight and continue to get there,” she stated.
Later in the afternoon, the minister also toured R.T’s Brewing Company and Crumbz Bakery both in the Pine Industrial Estate.