Game changers in the sorrel industry.
THE TURNERS were ecstatic to meet like minds and be taken seriously. “Entrepreneurship is a dreamer’s world, so the only people who can understand it are people who have followed their dreams and had the opportunities and been blessed enough to be able to finance those dreams and move forward,” Allison reasoned. “We needed a different mindset to look at our vision, to be able to understand it and help us achieve it.”
That same year, through FirstAngelsJA (FAJ), the Turners met another angel investor from Canada, Grant Seabrook, who also happens to be a design engineer, which is exactly the kind of connection they were looking for. Seabrook came to Jamaica with the intention of providing investment or mentorship, but “when he saw how much work my husband had already put into this invention, he was blown away. By the time he left us, he’d decided to help us upgrade and redesign to a completely commercial version, fully computerised. He did that for us pro bono. You just can’t put a value on that,” Allison said.
That redesigning process took a year, which caused the Turners to push back plans to have the machine ready to launch on the local market in November 2015. The redesign was completed last December, and Turner Innovations received its second phase of investment from FAJ in February 2017. They are now in the process of building the brand-new machine, which should be ready for launch later this year.
“Entrepreneurship is a dreamer’s world, so the only people who can understand it are people who have followed their dreams and had the opportunities and been blessed enough to be able to finance those dreams and move forward. We needed a different mindset to look at our vision, to be able to understand it and help us achieve it.”