CGA aims to grow into new markets

Every­thing doesn’t al­ways go to plan, but per­se­ver­ance is cru­cial.

This phrase can be ap­plied to the Ce­dros Bay brand as the com­pa­ny’s ex­pan­sion plans have con­sis­tent­ly been stalled by glob­al events.

How­ev­er, the brand is still push­ing for­ward. On Thurs­day, the com­pa­ny un­veiled its nat­ur­al hand wash line, sev­er­al months af­ter it was com­plet­ed and ready to launch.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Gabrielle Agos­ti­ni ex­plained that the ship­ping de­lays late last year proved to be a set­back for the brand, which is oth­er­wise en­tire­ly pro­duced lo­cal­ly.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, with our raw ma­te­ri­als, it has not been too dif­fi­cult, be­cause a lot of it is lo­cal that we get, es­pe­cial­ly the main raw in­gre­di­ents like co­conut oil that we get straight from Ce­dros and Ica­cos, which gave the name of the brand. But the pack­ag­ing, we re­al­ly tried to get it lo­cal­ly, but were un­able to. So ac­tu­al­ly, the main rea­son why we were sup­posed to launch this in De­cem­ber last year, but the pack­ag­ing was de­layed by two to three months. So that’s why, be­cause of every­thing go­ing on, we de­cid­ed to launch now in March,” said Agos­ti­ni in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian at the launch event at Hen­ry’s in St Clair.

She con­tin­ued, “I mean, there are a lot of dif­fi­cul­ties with the ship­ping and what­not, but now it’s all here. You just have to push back dates and what­not. But we’re glad we can fi­nal­ly launch now.”

How­ev­er, the Ce­dros Bay CEO was grate­ful that the brand had con­tin­ued to grow in stride de­spite the chal­lenges it had en­coun­tered since it launched in 2019. Agos­ti­ni ad­mit­ted that it was a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od to en­ter in­to busi­ness, which was not helped by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We re­al­ly want­ed to de­vel­op a nat­ur­al prod­uct that can be used for all skin types. My team and I de­vel­oped it be­cause, okay, just like my­self, I have very sen­si­tive skin, eczema, der­mati­tis, and there’s a whole lot of oth­er skin con­di­tions. So we want­ed to cre­ate a brand that any­body can use for all skin types. And we came up with this brand af­ter a few years of (re­search and de­vel­op­ment), but we launched it right be­fore COVID,” said Agos­ti­ni, “So of course, it was a dif­fi­cult time to re­al­ly get in­to the cos­met­ics in­dus­try, and we launched fa­cial oils, fa­cial cleansers, a whole range of body prod­ucts. But then, as you say, with the eco­nom­ic cli­mate and al­so what we do best at CGA, co­conut grow­ers are re­al­ly mass-mar­ket prod­ucts. So even though this is like a niche brand, we de­cid­ed to start fo­cussing more on mass mar­ket prod­ucts.”

The de­ci­sion to bring forth the new nat­ur­al wash line is a tes­ta­ment to the brand’s grow­ing suc­cess, as Agos­ti­ni ex­plained the its soaps had been do­ing well in the lo­cal mar­ket.

“So about two years ago, we launched a line of hand soaps be­cause we al­so make many oth­er hand soap brands that are not nat­ur­al. So it’s our first nat­ur­al brand,” she ex­plained, “So when we launched, our brand ac­tu­al­ly did quite well com­pared to the rest of the range. So we’ve de­cid­ed to launch the hand wash­es tonight be­cause of the suc­cess of that brand. As I men­tioned, we’re re­al­ly good with the gro­cery and re­tail chains to be able to push prod­ucts like that as well as just fo­cussing on the whole Caribbean aes­thet­ic and nat­ur­al in­gre­di­ents.”

The new line has al­so come on the heels of the brand’s at­tempt to re-es­tab­lish it­self re­gion­al­ly. Agos­ti­ni ex­plained that the brand had launched pre­vi­ous­ly in Ja­maica, but the pan­dem­ic had shut­tered those plans.

“We had en­tered the Ja­maican mar­ket, but ac­tu­al­ly, we en­tered it one week be­fore COVID, so that was when we tried in Ja­maica. But of course, COVID was dif­fi­cult, so we had to pull the brand out to the mar­ket. But then we ac­tu­al­ly, six months ago, launched in Bar­ba­dos. We just launched with the soaps that we think are do­ing quite well, and we’ve done a lot of ac­tiv­i­ties and lo­cal in­flu­ences. So Bar­ba­dos is re­al­ly the next mar­ket that we’ve launched in­to to try and get that forex,” she said, “So, do­ing it bit by bit, we’ll see how it does in Bar­ba­dos and de­cide where to go to next.”

While the brand has not yet re­turned to the Ja­maica mar­ket, Agos­ti­ni ex­plained the com­pa­ny is as­sess­ing its re­gion­al reach.

“Once we do well in Bar­ba­dos, we can look at maybe re-en­ter­ing the Ja­maican mar­ket or oth­er Cari­com mar­kets,” she said, adding that the com­pa­ny was al­so cur­rent­ly test­ing the Dutch Caribbean mar­ket as well, “We launched as well in Aru­ba and Cu­ra­cao. It’s mov­ing slow­ly, but we’re hop­ing to al­so push those mar­kets as well. So yes, we’ll fo­cus on the Dutch and the Eng­lish Caribbean is­lands.”

The Ce­dros Bay CEO ac­knowl­edged that the brand was up against sev­er­al well-known in­ter­na­tion­al beau­ty brands, but felt the com­pa­ny had a unique ad­van­tage as it was one of the few avail­able nat­ur­al prod­ucts on the mar­ket.

“It is al­ways dif­fi­cult to com­pete with the in­ter­na­tion­al brands, be­cause they have their recog­ni­tion. They’ve been around for dozens of years. But what is unique about us, one, of course, we’re lo­cal. Then, sec­ond­ly, we were nat­ur­al pro­duc­ing brands, and they ac­tu­al­ly don’t re­al­ly have any nat­ur­al com­peti­tors on the mar­ket. There are one or two oth­er brands,” Agos­ti­ni said, adding that the brand’s strat­e­gy in terms of pric­ing as well as its re­cy­clable pack­ages and mar­ket­ing push, which fea­tures sev­er­al lo­cal mod­els and in­flu­encers, had helped es­tab­lish its pres­ence.

She said, “We are a mass mar­ket brand, so we re­al­ly try to price it as low as pos­si­ble so that it can be avail­able to the av­er­age con­sumer. That’s what we did with the hand soaps, and that’s what we’re do­ing with the hand wash. We re­al­ly look at our com­peti­tors on the mar­ket and re­al­ly try and price in a way that any­body can af­ford it.”

Agos­ti­ni main­tained that even with the re­gion­al push in a bid to earn much-need­ed for­eign ex­change, the com­pa­ny would con­tin­ue to main­tain its lo­cal iden­ti­ty.