Passion drives hall of fame exporter

November 08, 2009 04:02:20 AM

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Her arms full with three trophies from the Prime Minister’s Exporter of the Year Awards last night, Gaetane Austin had just one thing to say as her company Pure Fiji became the first to be inducted into the TFL Hall of Fame – love what you do and it’ll drive you to do it better.

“You have to have passion for your business. We love our business and that’s what makes it work. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you won’t be able to survive because it is a lot of hard work but if you love it, you’ll get a lot of satisfaction,” Austin told reporters after her company was announced a winner for the third time last night.

Named the Unique or Emerging Exporter of the Year and the Exporter to the United States, Pure Fiji has grown into a multi-million dollar export business manufacturing “dozens and dozens of products”, Austen puts somewhat breathlessly.

With two factories located side by side in the Vatuwaqa industrial subdivision, Pure Fiji draws from local talent and resources to produce from sugar rubs to body butters to fragrant oil to soap to candles, with the company’s hand made paper being used for the menu at the exporter awards dinner.

Its products gaining fame both internationally and locally, the company’s use of local resources has benefits for rural communities in Fiji.

“Our virgin oil comes from Vanua Levu and honey and bees wax comes form different parts of Viti Levu. Our basket weavers are there in Suva and our paper makers are in Namosi so we try and see what we can do within the limits of our business and our finances to see how we can help in rural areas,” Austin told FijiLive.

Birthed in 2001 as its parent company Sanddollars, registered five years earlier, began to go into exports, Pure Fiji is co-owned by Austin’s daughter Andree, whom mum Austin credits for her “creative genius” and “all the people who make the company tick”.

Such is the company’s success that it has seen significant growth this year at a time of negative growth for the local economy.

“We’ve been very grateful in that we’ve seen companies falling around us and laying off staff and we’ve actually kept busy and we’ve been hiring more staff and it’s a lot of hard work to maintain our exports and our local sales,” Austin said.

It’s clear that the growth hasn’t happened in a vacuum.

“For instance when we first started making candles we knew nothing about it. Things like that we’ve had to learn as we go along so all this takes a lot of effort to perfect and we’re very proud of it.”

“We’ve made mistakes. Some of our first products were sort of crumbling around the edges but you learn as you go along and you get stronger when you learn that way.”

Investment in product research and development has also paid off.

“We’re in a constant state of development and improvement. We don’t just sit back and say ‘oh well, it’s selling well so we won’t change the packaging or we won’t add new products to the line’. Research and development costs a lot of money but if you’re going to do it, you have to constantly improve and stay abreast of market changes and developments overseas. We don’t have any competitors locally but we do overseas so we have to keep up with them too and that’s a very good thing because it keeps you on your toes.”