Business View Caribbean | March 2021

122 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN MARCH 2021 distribution company in Trinidad called A.S. Bryden & Sons Limited. The two companies remained separately entitled but maintained a cordial relationship. The next major change came in 2003, when A.S. Bryden & Sons Limited merged with another distribution company based in Trinidad called pi Caribbean. That merger resulted in Bryden pi Limited. The newly formed company took its first step toward developing a larger Caribbean footprint through the purchase of a Lasco holding distribution company in Barbados and tried to run it from Trinidad. That endeavor turned out to be a valuable learning experience for the company. “It was a horrible failure,” Tangwell admits. “And one of the key things from there is that in these islands, while we might have the knowledge and the knowhow, what we needed was a real presence on the ground to navigate little things with government and market nuances.” That lesson paid off just a few years later, when Bryden pi Limited expanded to Guyana. It took a while, but the company found a local partner that led to a joint venture called Bpi Guyana Inc. This entity has been a huge success since it was created just over three years ago. In addition, Bryden pi Limited purchased a small, over-the- counter pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in 2014. Now known as Bpi Genethics Limited, that’s where the company’s hand sanitizer and other OTC are manufactured. This expansion into private label brands and into markets across the Caribbean comes from a realization that the company must adapt and change the traditional “Distributional Model” in order to continue growing. Setting up a regional footprint grows Bpi’s customer base from an island of about 1.5 million people to many millions across multiple islands. Tangwell explains, “The big, global customers can say, ‘Now rather than me having 13 distributors on Barry Tangwell, Managing Director