Poor marketing cited as major reason for business failure

– as GCCI launches 2nd business forum

The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) on Tuesday officially launched its Business Development Forum in the hopes that businesses will be given a chance to build their capacity for Guyana’s upcoming economic boom while addressing gaps in marketing strategies.

The forum was first launched last year. This time around, the forum will be held from September 27 to 28 at Pegasus. According to GCCI Executive Timothy Tucker, the event is a partnership between the Chamber and a number of other organisations.
These organisations include the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Ansa McAL Trading Guyana, Republic Bank, and the Ministry of Business. Among the speakers at the event are businessmen Rosh Khan and Vishnu Doerga; Rowen Willabus, and Nigel Deosaran, who will deal with Initial Public Offerings (IPO) (the act of putting company shares on the stock market).
“The primary objective of this is to develop businesses. So you want to move businesses from small businesses and grow them, so they can be competitive on the international standard. We have several different large companies coming into the country and the chamber wants its members and the business community to move from where they are”.
“Last year’s event covered the small, medium and micro businesses capacity to develop and get ready for export. This year, we decided rather than have it so wide and so many speakers, we have niched it to two categories: marketing and finance”.
Gary Thompson, a member of the Forum’s steering committee, explained that businesses are prone to failure when there is a lack of understanding about marketing. Thompson noted that the forum would therefore address this.
“If we are to look at agro processing, we would see that most of these players have brands that are ready for the market. But what we see lacking is a clear understanding of marketing and branding. So we have a number of speakers lined up that will be able to speak to these issues. One of the fundamental things in marketing is identifying market opportunities and means”.
“What we see lacking is people get into business without a clear understanding as to who is your target audience, your market size, density and dispersion. So the speakers at this forum will disseminate information to the attendees. And of course, $255 is insignificant to the kind of information you’ll be getting from the speakers,” Thompson said.
Last year’s Business Development Forum was also held at the Pegasus. The fee at that time was $20,000. The Forum was hosted in partnership with the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Nations University, Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business, Republic Bank Guyana Limited and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).