“SIXTEEN scrubs in a white scandal bag” is how Tamieka Simmonds describes the humble beginnings of what is now a thriving group of businesses — Healthcare Apparel and Medical Equipment Rentals Jamaica — which sells medical wear and rents medical equipment to those who can’t afford to purchase them outright.

Her first major sale, a hospital bed, came from the family of a very recognisable name — Michael Lee-Chin. Simmonds told the story with excitement but explained that the road to that point was riddled with debt and depression, with her sleeping on floors to make her dream a reality.

The sister companies, both owned and operated by Simmonds, now sit on Hagley Park Road in St Andrew in a single unit. Neat and well-stocked, the Healthcare Apparel and Medical Equipment Rentals Jamaica business place shows no signs of the incredible struggle their owner endured to create them.

Healthcare Apparel came first, and through it she provides scrubs that health-care professionals can mix and match. Through her other brand, Simmonds provides equipment for rent and sale, including wheelchairs, hospital beds and mattresses, oxygen concentrators, and oxygen cylinders.

The idea to begin selling scrubs came to her a decade ago. At the time, Simmonds had been working at a company that sold cardiovascular equipment, and medical personnel constantly requested scrubs.

She said her employment ground to a halt after an incident which she claimed had no real resolution. Instead, after an extended suspension and a brief return to the office Simmonds, who was in her early 20s then, was reportedly fired.

It was that final “payout” of $38,000 that funded her new scrub business, as the reality of life without a steady income set in.

“I lost my apartment, and any means to provide for myself,” she explained.

Simmonds bounced between her brother’s floor, cushioned only by the pillows that came with his sofa, and her sister’s home where she shared a room with her nieces and nephews.

“I sent the $38,000 overseas — it was about US$300 at the time — and my friend went to Bobby’s [Department Store] and bought some scrubs,” she said.

Her friend’s father brought those 16 scrubs to Jamaica in 2014 and the entrepreneur grabbed a suitcase, packed them in it, and made the trek to St Ann’s Bay Hospital where she tried to make her first sale.

“Nobody bought anything,” she told the Jamaica Observer with a laugh.

Desperate, she took to the streets that same day and found her first customers — nurses Sadler and Taylor — on whom she reflects fondly. But business didn’t pick up much, and by 2016 Healthcare Apparel was pushed to the back burner while Simmonds again worked a 9-to-5 job, barely getting by.

When she got pregnant with her daughter, Ameli-Grace, the business owner became more desperate. Realising that she needed more cash to support herself and her baby, Simmonds returned to the company that sold cardiovascular equipment, but in a higher-paying role, and also began visiting hospitals to sell her scrubs on the weekends. She managed to get another apartment.

She was now juggling four jobs, including acting as a paramedic, all while still growing her venture. By 2019 Healthcare Apparel was a registered business.

“Debt swallowed me,” she told the Sunday Observer. “Debt collectors called [and had summonses for me]”

In 2020 she got pregnant again, this time with son Alexander. With little support from her children’s father, she again lost her apartment and returned to living with her sister.

“I was in a room with my niece and my nephew and we fought, because there was only one fan and we [all] wanted some breeze,” she said. “Whenever I felt a pregnancy craving, I would eat the craving. I would look in the fridge and then just make some tea, because everything was rationed.”

Food, prenatal vitamins, and other necessities were hard to come by, and the expectant mother dropped around 30 pounds throughout her second pregnancy.

Simmonds said she was at such a low point that she briefly considered abortion and then suicide, and sent her daughter to live with her grandmother out of fear of what would happen to the child in her care.

“I began to cry one day and I said I was going to hang myself on a breadfruit tree. My sister said, ‘Nobody is coming to save you. Save yourself! Get up!’”

With encouragement from her family and friends, determination won out and the pregnant entrepreneur took her suitcase of scrubs and went out again. She unexpectedly got a request for what would be her first sale outside of scrubs — a box of 40 thermometers. She didn’t have any in stock, but with the customer on hold she sourced the items from a medical supplier.

“I made $40,000 from that first sale,” she explained.

With that money she bought food for herself, her sister, and their children. Then, with a loan and her father’s help, she invested in a motor vehicle, intent on building both Healthcare Apparel and her budding supply business which would become Medical Equipment Rentals Jamaica.

“It was a little Mitsubishi Lancer with the back wheel [askew]. [My father] said, ‘Gwaan go mek life,’ and it was just me and my belly around the steering wheel,” recounted Simmonds.

Recalling that the car had no air conditioning or windshield wiper blades, she added: “I remember going to a company and the owner said, ‘You need to go sit down and rest; that baby is just going to slide out.’”

After the birth of her son during the COVID-19 pandemic, Simmonds finally got another job as a nurse at AC Hotel Kingston and was able to move out of her sister’s house and into a one-bedroom dwelling in Maverley, St Andrew, with her children.

There, her business flourished.

Simmonds would sell scrubs to her fellow nurses and began driving as far as Savanna-la-Mar Hospital in Westmoreland to ply her wares. With this new-found success, she upgraded her motor vehicle and resigned her job to focus on her business in March 2022.

“Which was dumb,” she laughingly said, “because back to school and summer were coming up; one whole week straight, [I got] no calls!”

But the calls eventually came for mattresses, scrubs, and shower chairs, and slowly her business began to find solid ground.

“Everything used to be in my house; even in my bedroom nurses would come to try on scrubs. In the hallway, nurses would be out in their panties trying on scrubs. And, by this time, if a doctor called me late at night and said, ‘Blood spilled on my uniform,’ I would go and I would carry my little babies behind me,” the business owner explained, referring to them as late-night “deliberies”, as her toddlers called them.

It was during this time that her $500,000 sale to the Lee-Chin family occurred. It was the first time she had ever made a sale of that magnitude.

“I was ecstatic; I said, ‘Mi reach!’ Then people started to order beds,” related Simmonds.

Since then, Healthcare Apparel and Medical Equipment Rental Jamaica have grown from strength to strength, even with what the owner describes as growing pains. When a National Commercial Bank (NCB) employee who was studying to be a doctor turned up at her small home to buy scrubs, it marked a new chapter.

“Shortly after that we were able to acquire a loan for $5 million with NCB,” Simmonds detailed, adding that she has since taken on million-dollar contracts,

Simmonds moved into her current location last year, February 25. She believes her success is due, in part, to her filling an important gap for Jamaicans facing medical crises.

“Health care in Jamaica is very lacking. If it is that you don’t know what you want, companies don’t like to forward information if they don’t have something. The thing that keeps us going is the trickle-down business from those big companies. Have you ever tried to call a company and gotten put on hold? When someone calls me I say, ‘Listen, I’ll walk you through the process.’ ”

Simmonds has now partnered with Basil Ferguson to provide Medic One — a medical ambulance service that is on call 24/7.

She repeatedly expressed how her parents, who constantly encourage her to have faith, and her siblings and friends worked to create a safety net for her and her children as she adjusted to being a single mom and entrepreneur.

According to Simmonds, those friends — Vacheron, Cathrine, Corneila, Sonika, and Neisha — are a key part of why Healthcare Apparel is a success today. From rent to food money, her friends were her support system. Simmonds explained that some in the group also bought into the venture, providing US$1,500 up front, while another allowed her to use his bank card to purchase stock and pay back in increments. Also highlighted is the man behind her graphics team, Trey.

She credits them for being the backbone of her ventures, which she said have helped hundreds of sick Jamaicans, both locally and abroad. The 35-year-old told the Sunday Observer that family members overseas seeking care for ill relatives are some of the company’s biggest clients.

Commenting on whether Jamaica’s Government should look into renting equipment for needy citizens, she said: “It depends; like all things, it takes time and know-how. It would be great, but I find that when a lot of hands stir a pot, care is lost and it becomes about the money.”

Simmonds, who has vast experience with the backend of health care and the associated expenses, has a warning for her countrymen.

“We are not a very proactive country, we’re a reactive one; and if you think having $5 million in savings can save you when you are ill, I can show you how you can finish that in just a week on medication and tests. I always say, ‘Put down something in the event that something goes wrong,’” she urged.

The business owner wants to contribute even more to health care, specifically for the elderly.

“My ultimate goal now is to open a nursing home — not one with 10 or 15 people because you want the money, you want six people who can get proper care,” she said.