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If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again.

Success is not the absence of failure, but the ability to persist even in the face of adversity.

Meet 23-year-old Kashielle Clarke, a 2020 University of the West Indies (UWI) graduate and curator of the Bukuri Jamaica skincare product line.

As a St Catherine native, who proudly calls the Glenmuir High School her alma mater, Clarke has acted as the ‘head cook and bottlewasher’ of her business since its inception in September 2019.

Though she admits that entrepreneurship was never to be her claim to fame, when she decided in May 2019 that she wanted to start her own business, she had a fairly good idea of exactly what she wanted her business to represent.

“I wanted the business to represent beauty, feeling beautiful inside and out,” said Clarke.

Suffice to say, with this in mind Bukuri, which she noted, “actually means beauty in Albanian”, was born.

Interesting to note, however, is that the Bukuri brand that many have come to know today is in no way what Clarke had imagined it would be when she ventured into business.

She stated: “I had decided to open the business in about May of 2019 but it didn’t open until about September, right, so the semester before, which would be September to December of 2018, I had failed four of the six courses I was doing, which meant that I could not continue with the major I was doing at the time and I was taking it badly.”

A true definition of the phrase ‘turning lemons into lemonade’, the Glenmuir alumni noted that she started her business in 2019 because “there was a lot going on with school and, in the beginning, it was my way of taking my mind off of what was happening with school.”

However, as Clarke later found out, running a small business while still being in school was not all sunshine and roses.

“I faced many difficulties managing the business and school,” she began. “As a small business owner, you are the everything for your business. You are the content designer, you are the product maker, you are the accountant, you pay the taxes, you’re the one who does everything… .”

“When I started I was going to school full-time and as I said I couldn’t afford to fail school now that this was my last lap. I needed to finish and get my degree so I had to be focusing on that, as well as ensuring that the business did not falter.”

Kashielle Clarke, owner of Bukuri Jamaica

Given this, she noted that running the business while attending school full-time was a challenge she learned to overcome.

“When I started I was going to school full-time and, as I said, I couldn’t afford to fail school now that this was my last lap. I needed to finish and get my degree so I had to be focusing on that, as well as ensuring that the business did not falter.”

No easy feat by any standards, when asked how she was able to manage both running her business and attending university, Clarke’s response was simple.

“I just get things done. As frustrating of an answer as that must be, I don’t know how else to explain it. I know that I have some orders to fill (or work to do and) I just get it done,” said Clarke.

Having faced her fair share of both successes and failures, Clarke’s advice to anyone who has failed before is to “take a break and try again”.

“Sometimes the feeling of disappointment and the fear of failing again can cause you to not want to try again. (However, just) take a break. (Take some time to) recuperate. Set a timeline to try again and stick to it.”