Like several other emerging local entrepreneurial pursuits, the South American Coco Company is looking to enhance its capacity to consolidate and expand through the Small Business Bureau’s recently launched Micro and Small Enterprise Development Project (MSED), which will address the single biggest handicap to the growth of the small business sector in Guyana: financing.
Founder and Managing Director of the South American Coco Company Lois Rickford is one of a growing army of young local entrepreneurs who have graduated from the post-secondary school goal of respectable public and private sector jobs in public administration, management and banking to the loftier ambition of building businesses of their own. In a society where business ambitions had once been limited mostly to merchant families, this is a good sign.
In Rickford’s case, she has chosen to take advantage of the global niche that has emerged from a contemporary coconut oil craze that is linked to good health and good looks. Her own virgin coconut oil is, the company’s brochure says, “made from fresh, properly ripened coconut flesh.” It is, the brochure says, far more “quality sensitive” than commercial grade coconut oils that are
