Nikesha Punch is one of those scores of emerging local creative souls in the Guyana manufacturing sector whose opportunities to ‘parade’ their products on the local market, are these days, constrained by the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The strictures of social distancing have reined in the assorted Open Air Markets and other public events that would have allowed her a measure of relatively inexpensive product promotion. These days, she must take what she gets and her primary challenge, these days, has to do with the fact that while the market has ‘gone to ground,’ so to speak, her savings are dwindling. Still, she is biding her time.
Nikesha’s Punchline Soaps, her first foray into the manufacturing sector emerged from her personal research into soap-making. The story, however, does not begin there. As a Grade Ten student at Campbellville Secondary School she was introduced to the discipline known as Agriculture Science. Afterwards, she headed for the Guyana School of Agriculture where she obtained a Diploma in Agriculture. Two years of employment in the private and public sectors were followed by entry into Sterling College in Vermont, USA where she read for a Degree in Sustainable Agriculture.
It was during her years as a student, first, at GSA and afterwards at Sterling College that she undertook research in the manufacture of soaps. During her stint at Sterling College she secured an on-campus job to meet her tuition costs serving, variously, as a Teaching Assistant, Crew Member, Livestock Stores Supervisor and Advisor to The Livestock Stores Supervisor. Setting the academic work associated with her studies aside, it was here that she acquired a knowledge of producing value-added products.
Upon returning to Guyana from the USA she undertook a modest business venture, marketing honey. Acquiring good quality product presented a challenge. Ironically, it was the advent of COVID-19 and the attendant national emphasis on an enhanced emphasis on higher sanitary standards that encouraged her to take a closer look at the manufacture of soaps. Hand-washing having become a matter of particular importance for children.
Transcending their washing-up purpose Punchline Soaps are decorative, fashioned into assorted attractive shapes – including dogs, cats, doughnuts and assorted local fruit and christened with their own particular scents………… Cashmere, Lush Succulent, Midnight Waters, and Peach Prosecco, among others.
Beyond the utilitarian value of Nikesha’s soaps, what they do as well is to underscore the creativity of local manufacturers.
Pricing has been a challenge. At $600.00 each they are above the average market price which is what makes product-presentation an important part of what she is offering.
Soaps, she says, are a start. Her immediate priority is the experience a genuine market test which can only be realized as and when the COVID-19 pandemic ceases. Meanwhile, she is focused on the expansion of her fledgling enterprise into something much more ambitious. Her longer term ambition is to harvest and market honey whilst venturing into cash crop rearing on land which hopes to acquire on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway.
Nikesha Punche can be contacted on telephone number 604 6481
