Meet the comeback kid

Twenty-year-old Whitney Sinclair just can't wait for the next crisis to conquer.

The Glengoffe, St Catherine, native has bounced back better from just about every adversity and is carving out niche global markets in Africa, Europe, and North America from the tap of her cell phone in the bush.

Tapping the natural environment in the rugged terrain of Glengoffe, Sinclair markets a range of herbs and spices such as ginger, sarsaparilla, cerassee, dog's blood. Sea moss and honey are also big sellers.

In just a year, she has generated an emerging line of business of sun-dried herbs and spices, which are packaged for export. Sinclair currently has a 300-strong customer base locally and internationally.

The Soul Food Jamaica boss is one of the success stories thrown up by the COVID-19 pandemic that haemorrhaged more than 130,000 jobs in 2020.

Sinclair understands what it was like to be a COVID castaway. She was a pharmacy technician at an outfit in Kingston but became a layoff casualty in April 2020, a month after Jamaica recorded its first coronavirus infection.

Despair morphed into survival as Sinclair co-opted her stepfather's van and organised for the delivery of coconuts, bananas, and other produce.

“At the time, there were not a lot of companies doing delivery, especially for fruits and vegetables, so we started off really, really good,” she told The Gleaner.

That venture was short-lived, however, as the van was involved in an accident during the second week of operations.

Sinclair took a hit.

“Business had slowed down because I couldn't do deliveries for a couple of months, and the orders stopped coming in, so there was no income coming in,” she said.

Those income challenges became even more complex when she got pregnant at 19.

But Sinclair drew on her instincts of survival that had been honed after the tragic loss of her father to diabetes complications while she was still in high school and life lessons watching her mother assume the role of sole breadwinner.

SCRATCHING THE ITCH

Though she landed a call centre job in October, Sinclair felt the itch to be her own boss three months later. She scratched the itch.

With more gusto than ever before, she revived her business in January.

“Now I started looking around me again and saying, 'What else could I get from the land because I didn't have money to start anything?' Then I remembered doing some sea moss deliveries to someone overseas and the person telling me about the health benefits,” she said.

That led Sinclair to establish an online presence, giving rise to what has become a brisk business buying and reselling sea moss among a raft of other produce.

Her simple maxim: If there's a herb, she can sell it.

Sinclair is among the emerging class of e-commerce business people operating from a home office and tapping shopping platforms like Shopify.

Having renamed the business Soulful Herbs and Spices, Sinclair continues to see marked growth, with weekly orders of up to 80 pounds of herbs and spices from international clients.

Sinclair isn't satisfied with the status quo. She has plans to acquire certification in the field of pharmacognosy – the study of medicines produced from plants and other natural sources – and to expand Soulful Herbs and Spices to create more employment.

Currently, she is assisted by her sister-in-law, Nicole Thompson, and interfaces with a network of farmers and fishing interests.

ruddy.mathison@gleanerjm.com