First Time Exporter To The US Market
Local entrepreneur Apisake Kurusiga will be exporting her Fijian Made products to the United States of America market come next month.
Her products are noni juice kura juice, charcoal soap, seaweed soap, layalaya tonic and turmeric tonic.
This would be her first time exporting to the US market as she traditionally exported to South Korea and Australia.
Mrs Kurusiga ventured into the U.S. market to grow her family run business Lapita Marketing enterprise.
She was amongst 50 emerging and established Fijian businesswomen that attended the third Fiji Forward Series of workshops and seminars organised by the Embassy of the United States of America.
Key message
As a key takeaway message from participating in the Fiji forward series, Mrs Kurusiga
said: “I think entrepreneurship is not just for people that do businesses.
“It’s for anyone that is going to negotiate with a child, negotiate with a bus driver because they don’t have a bus card.
“So really entrepreneurship is a lot of things, you don’t really have to be an entrepreneur to run a business. It just changes the way you think it shifts your mind to a different way of thinking, because at the end of the tunnel you want to achieve something. So you need to be able to learn how to question. So the art of questioning is part of that.”
The third Fiji Forward Series of workshops on supporting women entrepreneurship was part of the local recovery efforts where keynote speakers inspired local women entrepreneurs to adjust and thrive in the challenging business environment.
Objectives
US Ambassador to Fiji Joseph Cella said the workshop also aims to support Fijian women to be creative in doing business during the challenging business landscape in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In my discussions with some local businesswomen I have been impressed with their resilience and creativity.”