As two t-shirt designers carve out a business for themselves, a major problem confronting them is the red tape of Government lending/grant agencies.
They said it was not a case of not getting help, but the slow manner in which it came, a situation that caused an order they had promised a client to fall through.
Shako Gibson and Dale Jones of Graffiti House are plodding on because they have passion for what they are doing.
“Just don’t leave a message. You can never get hold of anybody.”
“There are always little loopholes before you get the call back from a message. Sometimes they say that they were out of the office and tell you to leave a message; you leave the message [and] then they don’t get to you in a timely fashion.
“When you are requesting help you are not in a position to demand anything so you are always in this position of ‘I’ll wait’. It is this constant back and forth and it becomes tedious,” said Gibson.
He also said the wait became more tedious when an officer went on vacation because no one took over the file to deal with the project.
Pointing to a computer that is part of a Government grant, Gibson said that they got it only this year after waiting for some time.
Gibson said he did not want to stereotype anyone, but he sometimes got the feeling that people did not want to help.
“When people want to see your business plan you have to revamp it to meet their standards – which is required, but we find that we had a lot of runaround from the organizations.”
The Graffiti House designer said he and Jones felt that no one was in their corner and there was “a basic frustration” because without those organizations “you can’t get the money that you want to move to another level so you are always in that mercy position”.
“You don’t ever want to step on toes and demand anything so you remain very humble about it and you don’t try to cross that line, because it comes to disrespect and then attitudes, so you don’t ever want to become forward with them.”
Jones said a quick response one way or the other could help them make a decision and avoid wasting time. He believed that people should listen to young entrepreneurs who were seeking guidance.
“I would like to [tell] people who are helping young people to listen to them. Even if you say you can’t help, at least people would have an answer.”
Both Jones and Gibson are confident that their T-shirt business can grow.
“T-shirts will never go out of the market. They have no rules.”
