Business View CARIBBEAN
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“We definitely are very happy with the position and the
respect we have within the ethnic area of the market.
Those people are our brand ambassadors,” said Sean
Garbutt, Ian’s son and the company’s group marketing
director. “They’re the people that will tell their friends
in North America and the U.K. what brand to buy and
why. They go to the stores and ask the store why they
don’t have us.
“We wouldn’t have achieved half of what we’ve
achieved without that great linkage.
“But we also do realize that there is a lot more growth
potential in the mainstream segment of the market,
which will require a slightly different message and
maybe slightly different placement to reach out to that
customer. We definitely intend on continuing our re-
lationship in the ethnic while trying to create a new
relationship in the mainstream areas.”
As for Jamaica, doing business in the home country
has some unique challenges of its own.
Energy costs – which see locals paying more than 40
cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, compared to less
than 10 cents in the U.S. – are what Ian Garbutt la-
beled as “horrifically expensive” and a “huge limiting
factor” on financial efficiency, though he conceded
some of that hardship for the company is evened out
by the benefits it gets from exporting the bulk of what
it manufactures.
“Because we are an ethnic brand making ethnic prod-
ucts that are locally sourced, we benefit from the value
of the Jamaican value versus the U.S. dollar,” he said.
“We’ve gone in the last three years from 86-to-1 to
