By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Two Bahamian entrepreneurs have expanded their cleaning products’ penetration of the New Providence retail market to Super Value after securing a spot in Kelly’s Home Centre two months’ ago.

Sidney Bethell and Brent Sturrup, Carib Botanicals’ principals, said that after starting with a business-to-business focus they have now achieved their ambition of breaking into retail sales.

“We made our first delivery Friday and Saturday, and we’ll be out there today [Tuesday],” Mr Bethell said. “We have four other locations tomorrow, and then once that’s complete, there’ll only be about two or three locations left out of the 13 locations that they [Super Value] do have.”

He added that the process was relatively smooth, especially since they have spent the past four years “building the business and selling directly to consumers”.

“All the banks carried our products. The Government bought products from us as well, we supplied the CPU (Consumer Protection Unit) and insurance companies, places like that,” Mr Bethell said. “So, again, the general public don’t know we exist, and this is the whole purpose.

“So with that being said, we approached Super Value because they always talk about putting Bahamians first and supporting Bahamians. And honestly, I have childlike faith, and I believe every word they said. So I approached them and, lo and behold, they were true to their word, and now they agreed to carry our products in their stores.

“If you take the emotion out of it, because when you want something and you’re relying or waiting for someone to respond to you, whatever the case may be, one second could feel like a year. But if I would take the emotion out of it, as far as the ease of communication, accessibility and all that stuff, it was an easy process,” Mr Bethell continued.

“They weren’t terse with their answers. They weren’t rude or anything like that. It was straightforward. Say, ‘this is the process. This is what needs to be done. It’s no guarantee, but x, y and z.’ So initially, before we found our new supplier, they were straightforward. They said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be priced out of the market. Honestly, it doesn’t make any sense, right at this point in time.’

“They didn’t gaslight us or give us smoke and mirrors and sold us a dream. They let us know ‘these are the other products that we have, similar to yours, in similar sizes, and this is a price that we are selling it for. The price that you’re selling to us is close to what we selling it for. It’s not going to work.’ At least they were honest.

“So we knew what the problem was, and everything in this world exists in the opposite. Nothing exists on its own. So every problem has a solution. I know what the problem is. Now we need to figure out how to fix this problem. And that’s what happened. It took us about four years to figure that out, but we figured it out.”

Employing eight persons, Mr Bethell said Carib Botanicals needs more staff and a bigger premises. He added that the company has outgrown its current space, noting their efforts to obtain a place in an industrial park have spanned five years.

“In fact, just with the clients we had before, once we do our mixing and we put that in inventory, that takes up about 90 percent of our space in storage,” Mr Bethell added. “Now you have to include Super Value, Kelly’s and potentially a distributor, because we are talking to a few distributors right now. Nothing is set in stone. It’s looking promising, but nothing is set in stone as yet.

“So, even once a distributor comes on board, they’ll distribute to everywhere else that Super Value and Kelly’s can’t get to. We’re not going to have any space. Good problems. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. Good problems.

“So, hopefully, we’ll get a little piece of Crown Land somewhere and we can build a proper facility because we do need to hire more staff. We do need to buy more equipment. We can help cut down the unemployment rate and help create another avenue for a different type of career and all that stuff.”

Carib Botanicals has recently added Carib Suds, a liquid hand soap; Junkanoo All Purpose Cleaner; Abaco Pine multi-purpose cleaner; Breezy Dish Washing Detergent; and ‘Lutra Clear Window and Glass Cleaner to its inventory.

Mr Bethel said that by the 2026 second quarter the company expects to have introduced a laundry detergent, degreaser, hair shampoo, liquid body soap, laundry detergent and fabric softener. He added that it tries to support other Bahamian businesses while creating their products.

“We get all of our bottles locally, either from Blanco Bleach or ARM,” Mr Bethell added. “The alcohol that we use in our sanitizer and other products, we source that from John Watling’s. So anywhere we can support Bahamians... because you don’t want to be a hypocrite and say, support Bahamians, buy Bahamian and then everything that we use is being imported from a foreign country.

“So wherever we can, whatever we need that is here and feasible, we source it here. I want to stress this. We manufacture every single thing with our label on it. We don’t buy from Costco or wherever, Wal-mart and slap a Bahamian flag or a logo on it. Our facility’s located on York Street, off of East Bay [Street], and that’s where we do all of our mixing, all of our labelling, all of our packaging right there.

“So everything that you see, 99.99 percent of the stuff in that box, is from The Bahamas. The only thing that’s not are the labels and the boxes themselves, to a certain extent, because sometimes we do source boxes locally.”

Born during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carib Botanicals initially sought to fill the need for more hand sanitizers. After much research, Mr Bethell said they mixed batches until they “agreed on the right formula”.

“Based on that, we started ordering raw materials in small quantities, of course,” Mr Bethell said. “Back then it was you had to stay in all day, and then the next day, you’d have to leave the house and feel the sun. So we’ll meet up in the food store parking lot, and I got the materials from him, went home, and sat down and started mixing four batches.

“Two days later, we’ll be allowed to leave again. I will hand him my four batches with my notes, and I will receive his. We’d test it out and make adjustments. And we did it for about two weeks until we finally agreed on the right formula.

“So again, being a Bahamian product, we knew that we already were going to be judged against other products that were already out there. Purell and the rest of them, they use isopropyl alcohol. We decided to use ethyl alcohol, which is pure, hospital grade. We also know that WHO (World Health Organization) standards, it has to have at least 65 percent alcohol concentration in it,” Mr Bethell added.

“Ours is actually 71 [percent]. So, whatever we did, we had to do it better than what everybody is already used to, because that is the standard that we’re going to be judged against. So, once that happened, everything is going fine. So we started off with the sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, surgical grade face masks, and we also sold alcohol that we sourced locally.”