Harry Sooknarine

Harry was born in Kelly village on August 9, 1933. His father, Barney Sooknarine, was initially a pupil-teacher who later rented land from sugar estates and became a small cane farmer. Harry was the third child out of a family of eleven. Born into a Presbyterian family, he attended Caroni C.M. School, then Arouca. At the latter school, Harry became a pupil-teacher, an occupation he pursued for about four years. However, he was not satisfied with teaching. He found that there were too many holidays and that his salary of TT$22.60 per month was inadequate. Having recognised that he needed to educate himself in the field of business, Harry pursued courses at Amow's Commercial School.

Harry also worked as a store clerk, first at Lionel Jeffers Bookshop on independence Square in Port of Spain and later at Yuffe's Brothers' in 1951, he decided to study for the 'O' Level Certificate as Osmond's High School. While attending Osmond's High School, he sold vegetables at the Port of Spain Central Market.

In 1953 Harry got married. His mother-in-law was related to the wife of James Roger Jutagir of Jutagir and Co. who operated a hardware store. He became deeply involved in the hardware business and his development and growth as a businessman was influenced by James Roger Jutagir and Solomon Yuffe. Harry worked for Jutagir and Co. until 1963. He then decided to get into business on his own. He obtained a loan of $500 from the chase Manhattan Bank, and opened a small retail business and parlor in California in Central Trinidad which he operated for approximately three years. In 1963, his wife's uncle who opened a grocery and bar in Kelly Village, became very ill and decided to sell the business.

Harry decided to buy the business which contained about $15,000 worth of stock. Harry operated the grocery for eight years, during which time the business flourished. His intention was to expand and get into a product line that would broaden the base of his clientele from a local one to a national one... The idea dawned upon him that if he could "take one wrinkle off a woman’s face he could make a million dollars", so he decided to get into cosmetics. In 1972, he began to contract small-scale producers to manufacture his cosmetics. He developed certain formulae for skin care which worked quite well and are today kept in his vault. This was the genesis of the company, Caribbean Pride Cosmetics.

Harry decided he would liquidate the former as the cosmetic business proved to be a more lucrative investment. This happened in 1974. He admitted that he made his first million dollars in the Caribbean Pride Cosmetics. His success he believed, was due largely to he marketing strategy which by-passed the conventional methods of advertising, that is, via media - newspaper, radio, television - to attract the consumer to his product.

As Harry's operations expanded, so did too his transportation fleet (to five vans) and his sales team, to sixty girls. In 1974, however, Harry began to loose the use of his left leg. He was diagnosed as having contracted multiple Sclerosis. He then began to look for a product that would allow him to operate despite his handicap. While in the cosmetic business, Harry always had a problem getting labels for his products. Moreover, he recognised that there was no-one in the country producing precision good quality labels. In an attempt to fill this need, Harry got into the printing business. He also noticed that nearly all the labels produced at the time in Trinidad were not in colour and had no adhesive backing. Harry felt that if he could produce a self-adhesive colour label he could make the venture viable.

In mid-1974, Harry left Trinidad to enroll at Pell's Art School in New York to study commercial art and to familiarise himself with printing techniques. By the time Harry returned to Trinidad, the press had already arrived. His son Roger was trained by him to operate the printing machines. Cariflex was sited in the same compound with Caribbean Pride. The Press, ancillary machinery and stock represented an initial capital investment of TT$1.6m and its labor force consisted of twelve persons. Further, he was able to provide them with labels at a lower cost than they had normally paid. Cariflex produced the labels cheaper than their competitors because printing, adding of adhesives and cutting were all done in one operation. Using the strategy developed in the cosmetic industry of going directly to the consumer, Cariflex dealt directly with manufacturers so that the general public knew very little about the company. In 1975, however, Harry's health began to deteriorate and he lost the use of his other leg and his arms, and his eyesight also began to fail.

Since 1974, Cariflex has almost monopolized the labeling industry in Trinidad and Tobago. The company has grown because it keeps abreast of developments in the printing industry as well as maintaining a rigorous programme of re-investment of profits in the early stages of its operations. Cariflex has updated its machinery from a three-colour press to a four-colour press, then to a six colour press and today the company operates with two seven-colour rotary letter presses and a foil stamping machine doing pressure sensitive labels. Today, the watchwords of Cariflex remains "Quality and Service".