Female businessowner gets opportunity of a lifetime in Canada
Published:Tuesday | July 25, 2017 | 12:00 AMTamara Bailey
When owner of Mi Natural, Shenae Morgan, decided to participate in a local initiative called Made in Manchester, an event of 20 Twenty Strategies, she had no idea her brand would soon have an international appeal.
A civil engineering undergraduate from the University of Technology, Morgan has a passion for natural living and, as such, makes natural beauty products that use authentic oils as the main ingredients and produced by local farmers.
Mi Natural, currently focusing on hair potion - a hair oil that lengthens, thickens, and strengthens the hair, is currently the only Jamaican brand represented in Montreal, Canada, that is benefiting from this year's StartUpExperience.CA.
The Montreal Startupfest is Canada's largest start-up event, with their new international initiative being StartupExperience.CA.
This initiative brought 100 international entrepreneurs to work in Montreal, one of Canada's busiest start-up cities, for three months this summer (May-July 2017), to create and grow new relationships between start-up communities on a global scale.
RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
According to Morgan's mentor, Annette Salmon, six female start-ups participated in the Made in Manchester event, but Morgan grabbed the opportunity for Canada.
"Even though her branding and product were not finalised, I assisted her in putting on the final touches to her concept logo just in time for the event and have been mentoring her since. I received communication about the Start-up Fest in Montreal, Canada, which I shared with a group of start-ups who attended the event. Shenae applied and the rest is history," Salmon said.
According to Morgan, this year's theme is LUCK - recognising that you are at the right place at the right time' and speaks to her happiness for ceasing the opportunity.
During this time, Morgan was able to meet the founder of StartUpFest, Phil Telio and many other multimillionaire entrepreneurs who gave talks about their success stories such as Harley Finkelstein, founder of Shopify and Sam Pasipalak, founder of Maluuba.
"Ron Szekely, past marketing manager from L'Oreal, also mentored me and gave great insight on enhancing hair potion - all of which I'll be infusing into my product upon returning to Jamaica in August," Morgan told Rural Xpress.
She added that this adventure has allowed her to widen her horizon as her product is now being sold in five stores in Canada and the list of prospects are growing.