IT’S now 33 years since Doreen Frankson, a self-styled nationalist, started her paint company, EdgeChem Jamaica Limited, but the passion and drive which got her started in the first place still burn as bright, if not brighter now, than when she started.

But EdgeChem was not her first company. Frankson said when she left school, she was invited by a business partner to form her first company, Steinhol Chemicals, an entity which produced glues and adhesives.

During the interview for this piece, Frankson reflected on the highs and lows, her face beaming with pride as she told a story of joy and pain, but one she said which brought so much achievement, she would encourage anyone to experience it.

“As a young girl, I used to hang out with Carlton Alexander, Vin Henderson-Davis, Ray Hadeed, and those men were powerful manufacturers and good Jamaicans and really encouraged me as a young miss to look at manufacturing because they lived and dreamed manufacturing,” she started.

“That was where I got my passion from. Making something, doing something. I would not be able to import and sell anything to save my life. I don’t know how to do that. But give me something to produce and I will produce it. So that’s what I did.”

She said she has never sought a job, working only at two companies in her life, and in both she was a co-owner.

“I left school and went straight into manufacturing after a friend of mine, who was majority shareholder, invited me to be part of the entity,” she said of her first foray into business in 1971 with Steinhol Chemicals.

Frankson said she spent about 20 years there before leaving in 1991 to start EdgeChem. But her leaving was due to her business partner dying. Not feeling like she wanted to continue, she said she sold the business and started EdgeChem with four friends.

“We started with a seed capital of $1 million in 1991,” she said. Though that was a lot of money then, Frankson said it was just about half of the $1.9 million the business plan required for the start-up, and so she raised additional capital through preference shares from the now-defunct Trafalgar Development Bank.

But raising capital was to be the least of her worries at the beginning.

“I rented a place in Olympic Gardens (St Andrew) and when I went there, the don man business started,” she said.

She recalled then that a man identifying himself as the don turned up at her fledgling start-up, a location which she had rented to produce furniture finishes for what was then a booming industry, and told her that she must pay him money every Friday to continue operating. But Frankson said that didn’t faze her and she didn’t accede to the request.

“I don’t check for those things [donmanship], so I informed them I’m not paying any extortion money,” Frankson said.

But that stance was not overlooked by the don and his cronies.

Frankson said on the Friday of her first week of operation, she got a delivery of solvents to produce her furniture finishes and left it in stores over the weekend. Returning on Monday, she said it was discovered that the plug which caulked the drum holding the chemicals was released and all the raw material was leaked on the floor. The men who she refused to pay, she said, did it to get back at her. It was then that she was determined to leave Olympic Gardens rather than deal with the dons. She left in 1993 after buying her current location from the Urban Development Corporation (UDC).

Still, in that first year, she said business was good, with sales reaching $10.8 million.

“At the time Jamaica was into making a lot of good furniture. You know, they made mahogany furniture and we used to export them. So furniture finishes were heavily demanded. I did a survey and found that Sherwin Williams — a paint producer — was the only contender, and people felt that they didn’t have any option and they just had to take whatever price or whatever they gave them. So I saw the gaps and then sought to fill them,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

In that year, Frankson said the company netted profits of $710,000.

As she read the numbers from prepared notes, the EdgeChem CEO paused to reflect on her first day at the company.

“We started with one machine and one mixing pot,” she said. “The first order I got was for 200 gallons of furniture finishing. I slept on the pallet the night to get out that order, because it was only three of us at the time. That was a big order for us at the time,” she said, laughing as she acknowledged that now that would be a drop in the bucket for her company.

But that dedication paid off despite challenges she faced operating in the tough St Andrew neighbourhood. Frankson said business picked up quickly, and in the following years, the company recorded sales growth of 25 per cent and 50 per cent in 1992 and 1993.

“When we started with furniture finishes, people were coming in and asking for other products, such as body fillers, which we started to make. We also added automotive paints and industrial paints. We added decorative paints last,” she recalled.

But with issues with dons still lurking in the background, she said she moved quickly to build the first phase of the factory from which she operates now in less than 12 months and moved in 1995.

“We were always very uncomfortable. And what it meant, we weren’t able to work at night because you would hear gunshots all around you. It was difficult, but we survived.”

When she moved, she said growth took off even more. Sales doubled in 1995 from the level it was in 1994, the last year she produced from the facility in Olympic Gardens before levelling off in the mid-20 per cent growth a few years after.

Despite finding success, she said she had to face challenges because of her gender.

“I recognised it early. My partners were all men and that was for a specific reason, because they would front the business, right. And I remember going into a bank, it was Worker’s Bank, to get some working capital and the man was so disrespectful to me that I said to my partner that went with me, ‘Let’s take our papers and get out of here.’ “

Still, she said those issues didn’t daunt her. Growing up in St Mary and Portland, she said she was taught that she can achieve anything a man can, and that drove her determination in business, even against the odds.

One of those odds was accepting her products. Frankson said when she got into the consumer side of the business, having started first selling directly to other businesses, she was blocked. The large hardwares did not want to buy her products.

“So I said, ‘Okay, when one door closes, another one opens.’ So I opened my first retail location at Hagley Park Road [St Andrew] and I have not looked back since.”

She said the success she saw in her own retail outlets pushed her to open more. Now EdgeChem has 25 retail stores across the island, with a store in every parish except St Thomas.

“I opened a store during COVID. I opened a branch on Molynes Road in the midst of COVID.” After that, she said another store was opened in Falmouth, and most recently a branch was opened in Fairfield in Montego Bay, St James.

EdgeChem now distributes about a half of its output through those stores. Other retailers now carry its products, distributing the other half, including in the export markets in the Caribbean and Florida.

“We export our automotive and industrial lines to the United States,” Frankson said as she emphasised that going forward the company will be looking for more growth outside Jamaica.

“Our strategy is to do exactly what we have done in Jamaica to provide good quality products, good customer service, and reasonably priced products to the end user.”

“Now we are looking at Panama and other countries as we go along.”

But like most manufacturers, Frankson bemoans the cost of operating in Jamaica, applauding those who are able to export, given the circumstances.

“You know, we have a lot of international companies here. We are the only fully owned Jamaican paint company, and the Jamaican people have stayed with us and they have helped us to grow, and we [are] eternally grateful to them,” she said.

She said when she just started, the big international paint companies did not take her seriously.

“What we’re losing sight of is that not only is EdgeChem a company that was founded and grown by a woman, but one who took on the international companies like a Sherwin Williams, took on a Berger Paints, I took on all of them,” she said. Now she says they look at her differently and see her as a serious competitor.

But while starting with furniture finishes, Frankson has now grown the product line to more than 200 in four categories – furniture finishes, automotive finishes, industrial paints, and decorative paints.

She said she is proud of the innovations her company has been credited for, name checking the Automel brand of automotive products which was “developed right downstairs by a young Jamaican chemist”.

“I’m the pioneer of automotive clinics in Jamaica, getting all of the mechanics together and teaching them about the products and all of that. We pounded the pavement because, again, I can’t take on the international boys with money, with advertising. We didn’t have those, that kind of funding. We still don’t, and so we had to build market share through direct selling.”

Despite advancing years, Frankson said she has no desire to retire anytime soon and is planning the next phase of growth for EdgeChem.

“I enjoy and love what I do, and it is my passion. EdgeChem is my passion, so retirement is not on the cards right now,” she told the Business Observer.

“It has been a journey of a lot of success, with a lot of challenges, but it has been very satisfying, and I intend to leave my footprints for this, because I think we have a story and I think we are now a force to be reckoned with in the marketplace.”

“It has had its sacrifices, because during those long hours and long days, and time without pay, and all of those sacrifices, I didn’t balance my time well to have a family of my own. So that’s something that I have regretted, even though I have a lot of children, but I don’t have any biological children,” Frankson said as she counted her words, showing emotions for the first time during the interview.

“It has been a journey of pain, a journey of joy, a journey of accomplishment. I don’t have anything else to prove. I’ve done it all,” she said.

For her, the staff has been wonderful and her interaction with them makes her “feel loved as a CEO”.

The dedication of her staff, she said, was on display during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping the company to rack up 20 per cent growth for each of the years when the economy was largely on lockdown.

“We have a lot of EdgeChem babies, where my staff bring them to work and put them in a basket at their feet while they work.”