To seek comfort in the thought that they live in an expansive country, Barbadians often cast their eyes a few hundred miles north, to The Cayman Islands. For them, this tiny place would be an unlikely launching pad for a trans-Caribbean corporation.

But there is one company that, over the past several years, has given the former Jamaican protectorate bragging rights to this enviable status.

Any chest-thumping by Caymanians that three of their oversized Caribbean partners — Jamaica, Barbados and The Bahamas — have played host to their franchise operation, would be tempered by the fact that this enterprise — Tortuga Rum Corporation — is the creation of two Jamaicans: Robert and Carlene Hamaty. It was this couple who, in 1984, decided that the tiny resort destination was long due its own branded line of rums.

In Jamaica, on the westerly outskirts of Montego Bay, on the way to Hanover, it is hard to miss the eye-catching, colourful 10,000 square-foot building that houses the bakery, ice cream production, and retail outlet for the Tortuga brand of products.

In this building overlooking the Caribbean Sea, customers regularly take delight in sampling the company’s signature Tortuga Rum Cake. Also taking centre stage is the multi-flavoured gourmet Italian ice cream, and other freshly produced delicacies that have become a talking point for tourists and residents of western Jamaica alike.

The Hamatys — Robert, a former airline captain, and Carlene, a purser — have spent the past two-and-a-half decades expanding the range of products and anchoring the Tortuga brand within The Cayman Islands. They have developed an 18-branch retail network of branded shops and in-bond stores, and the 10,000 square foot headquarters in which they invested a few years ago ensures reliable production capacity to meet current and future demand.

In 1987, tourists visiting The Cayman Islands began to get their first introduction to a cake that for years had been a family’s best kept secret, but which was now being tested for its commercial viability.

Carlene had fine-tuned the secret recipe for the Tortuga Rum Cake and the initial response was encouraging.

Over the years, the end product has won accolades from many of the world’s most respected authorities on all things culinary. But importantly, it has enjoyed the endorsement from the most critical constituents: the market; the tens of thousands of visitors to the island and locals who have made this company Cayman’s highest exporter of visible goods.

The explosion in demand accompanied by the supply response has placed the Tortuga products and brand name on the lips and inside the cupboards of individuals in 70 countries across the globe.

The fast-paced growth has been underpinned by an economic symbiosis between the creators of the products, and a pair of marketing gurus who have made it their life’s mission to ensure that people, wherever they are, can have them delivered to their doorstep.

Robert did not have to look far for the help that he and Carlene needed to transform their high-quality culinary delights into a global brand. His daughter Monique had, for a few years, been tinkering with the marketing side of the business, and in 1997 took the first formal steps towards becoming the global marketer for Tortuga’s baked products.

Monique started Tortuga Imports/Tortuga Rum Company in Miami, with help from her friend Marcus Simmonds, an accountant and finance man whom she would marry three years later, in 2000.

Today, the couple can rightly take credit for helping the Tortuga brand to become a US$10-million per year business, and arguably the most easily recognisable non-tourism brand from or within The Cayman Islands.

Robert and Carlene Hamaty have always understood the need to create a mechanism to get their products into the hands of individuals who had visited Cayman, tasted the cakes and other delights, but had no access to them back home. And they did. He established a 1-800 number for people to call, and had an arrangement with his daughter, then a Florida International University marketing student, to accept the delivery, and send them onwards to the customers, via FedEx or UPS.

Monique operated the business from her grandmother’s garage in Miami.

All of this changed in 1997, a year after she graduated.

“I played a backseat role in the company during the early stages,” says Marcus. “I did the incorporation for her and the accounting. Monique’s family business was the genesis of the business.”

Marcus, a graduate in accounts and finance from Howard University, was working with Ryder Corporation when he helped Monique with the paperwork for the incorporation of Tortuga Imports Inc, and Tortuga Rum Cake Company in Miami. He formally joined the business in 2000 when he and Monique got married — initially as chief financial officer, and Monique as chief executive officer. Now they both operate as co-managing directors.

The Miami-based operation has come a long way since 1997 when it posted sales of US$150,000 in the first full year of operation.

Marcus says that the first big jump in sales followed the successful negotiation for the products to be carried in the shops of Miami-based cruise ships. The Tortuga brand is now available on 100 passenger ships.

Having the distribution operation in Miami was critical to clinching that deal because it allows for quick delivery of the products directly to the cruise ship warehouses, from where they are placed on the individual cruise liners.

“Once we became formalised, Tortuga Imports took over the distribution,” Marcus explains. “It created a big push for the sales. It is difficult for Caribbean companies to do business with US cruises from their base in the region.”

Soon, the modest 1,300 square foot warehouse from which Tortuga Imports operated began to burst at the seams. Two other warehouses were quickly brought on line, but they too ran out of capacity.

By 2001, the husband and wife team had to make an important business decision.

“In 2001 we made our first commercial acquisition,” Marcus tells the Business Observer. “We bought a 25,000 sq ft warehouse in Miami which still serves our purpose. It still provides us with some room to grow, although within the next three to five years we will be looking for new space because of our expansion plans.”

In addition to providing the global distribution point for Tortuga’s baked products, most of the company’s procurement is also funnelled through the Miami warehouse and office.

“We purchase anything that they need — an oven, car, raw material. For example, we make a proprietary mix in one location to keep our products consistent and ship the mix to all the producers.”

Tortuga Imports is a tightly run outfit with 15 employees in addition to the two owners.

Monique remains the face of the company, but in recent years has taken a back seat on the day-to-day operation to pay more attention to the couple’s three children. Her husband has taken up the slack.

The customer service department is pivotal in this business model, because it is here that mail orders done primarily through the Internet are processed, and where issues related to sales and customer complaints are resolved.

“We are very customer-focused, so this part of the operation is critical to us,” notes Marcus.

The sales and marketing team members are responsible for what the managing director describes as “execution of our strategic plans”, while the operations team “sees to it that we get the products in and out of the warehouse in an efficient manner and that the products are always available to satisfy the customer orders”.

A closely policed receivables policy ensures that money owed to the company get into its bank account with minimum delay.

There is an “arms length” relationship between the Miami operation and the company in Cayman, an arrangement that Marcus believes is important to a range of issues including pricing strategies.

A powerful example of this policy at work is the recent decision by the folks in Miami to source some of the products from the Barbados franchise operator, rather than the usual Caymanian source, “because of the high cost of production in The Cayman Islands”.

“This was a tough decision,” explains the managing director, “but we have to be mindful of the costs of doing business” .

Though the original Tortuga Rum Cake remains the company’s core product, there is ongoing effort to broaden the range. For example, six sauces and condiments were recently added to the product line as well as a chocolate rum offering — with the expansion being driven primarily by customer feedback.

“As we learn more about our customer taste, we are able to mine them for product extension,” Marcus offers. “Our approach to expansion is one of reverse engineering; we have the demand created first before we try to sell the product. It has worked for us.”

Both Marcus and Monique left Jamaica early — she as a little girl in 1979, and he during the mid-1980s at the end of first form at Wolmer’s High School in Kingston. Monique and her younger brother Basil, now a captain at Cayman Airlines, lived with their mother who is divorced from their father.

Monique and Marcus met in 1995.

For Marcus, a key to the success of the brand is the company’s unrelenting drive for quality, and its uncompromising fidelity to the formula for the cakes that the customers have come to know and love.

“We have not compromised on the quality,” he remarks. “We always take the approach that customers equate quality with Tortuga.”

By his estimate, the Miami operation alone accounts for about 50 per cent of the cake sales, with the Cayman Islands as well as the three franchisees making up the other 50 per cent.

“Cake represents 90 per cent of what we sell,” he notes, “and about 90 per cent of this is one particular flavour — the original rum cake.”

In an economy that lacks critical mass, as Cayman obviously does, those seeking to build multi-million-dollar corporations have no option but to look outwards. This is an economic truism that Monique and Marcus understand too well.

Without the export drive we would be swimming around in a fish bowl in Cayman,” he notes. “You have to go where the market is. If there is a demand outside of your market you have to go after it. That is the approach that we continue to take.”

Moses Jackson is the founder of the Jamaica Observer Business leader Award programme. He may be reached at moseshbsjackaon@yahoo.com