Building up Brandon The successes, challenges, and stories from Brandon’s immigrant business owners

BUILDING UP BRANDON

By Shayna Wiwierski

The successes, the challenges, and the stories from Brandon’s immigrant business owners

Over the past 10 years, Brandon has welcomed close to 6,400 newcomers to the city, according to Economic Development Brandon. Of those 6,400, many of them were new Canadians.

Brandon is home to a large immigrant population, many of whom own businesses in the city. Laxman Negi, director of The Chilli Chutney, is originally from India and came to Canada initially in 2005. Landing in Edmonton with a background in culinary arts, he started working for The Chilli Chutney out there, and after talking with his boss, moved to Brandon shortly after.

Negi started up The Chilli Chutney in Brandon and then once he obtained his permanent residency he moved to Winnipeg and worked for a number of Indian restaurants there before managing the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) at St. Vital Mall for three years.

“I worked [at KFC], and because I started [The Chilli Chutney] in Brandon, I always missed Brandon,” says Negi, who also has experience in Italian, Chinese, and Thai cuisine. “The small city, the people are very nice and friendly, as well as reliable as long as you are serving good food to them. My previous boss couldn’t run the place so he wanted to sell it. I called him and took over.”

Negi moved back to Brandon in 2011 and transformed The Chilli Chutney into what it is today. He says there were a number of challenges to overcome in running a business, one of which is learning the culture. Additionally, he mentions that having good credit is extremely important since that’s the key to secure financing and a mortgage from the bank. Negi says that since he had been in Canada for a few years before taking it over, he already had good credit and was able to finance the restaurant purchase and obtain a credit line. Also, because he was the one who started the restaurant initially, his customers knew the business and were happy to support him once he moved back to the city.

Having good credit is just one of the obstacles involved in starting a business in a new country, something that many immigrants don’t have right away when moving to Canada.

“When you land in Canada, you have no credit record at all,” says Martie Kruger,

Manitoba is home to a large immigrant population, many of whom own businesses in the city.

immigration consultant at Martie Kruger Immigration Canada. “I have had clients with a million, two million dollars in the bank in their own country, but they don’t have it in Canada. So, they have nothing in Canada to prove they have security. I meet with lots of people who aren’t qualified for loans or mortgages, so it’s a challenge to get money.”

Although Kruger works with newcomers to Canada, she’s also an immigrant herself. She moved to Brandon from South Africa in 2008 after spending eight years trying to get here. Kruger was a business owner in South Africa and obtained her real estate license shortly before immigrating to Brandon. Once her and her husband came over she completed another real estate course, obtained her Canadian license in 2010 as a real estate agent, and started working for Century 21. After a year doing real estate she took an immigration course and then got licensed in 2015 as an immigration consultant. She now specializes in getting workers from other countries to come over and work on Canadian farms.

“I was very fortunate because one of the agents at Century 21 was a farm specialist and he immigrated from the UK many years ago. At that time, he assisted farmers to immigrate to Manitoba. I asked [him] to go with me to South Africa to recruit South African farmers because of the hard times that South African farmers are going through,” says Kruger. “We went in 2011 for the first time and we did seminars to recruit farmers to immigrate to Manitoba.”

Kruger says that over the past year she has had an increase in inquiries about moving to Canada, especially after the Canadian government’s response to COVID19 and the ability to get vaccinated. She says though that once people do come over they often run into many challenges, such as the economics of running a business. New immigrants need to learn the bylaws, regulations, and the laws in Canada. There is also the fact that since Brandon is a smaller city, it’s tough being a newcomer when the community is so tightknit. “It’s difficult to settle in a smaller city like Brandon, or even some of the smaller places. People grew up in Brandon and have families and support systems. You come in as a newcomer,” she says. “Although people are very supportive and helpful, they still go to their family members and friends to assist them. That’s just life. I do business with people I like. If I don’t know you, as a new immigrant from somewhere else, I would like to check you out before I do business with you.” With that being said, thankfully there are many options available to newcomers to help them set up a life and a business in the city. Brandon was selected as one of only 11 communities across Canada to be a part of the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP) program. The program creates a pathway to permanent residency for skilled foreign nationals who are able to fill local job vacancies and want to live in Brandon and the surrounding area.

Although the program is targeted to help immigrants find jobs for other employers in Brandon, Sandy Trudel, director of eco

Clients that Martie Kruger has assisted in doing their immigration to move to Canada.

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Emelio Brown (left), CEO of Intritech Digital Marketing, is originally from Kingston, Jamaica. He came to Brandon in 2014 to attend Brandon University. He is seen here with his business partner Tapiwa Magwati from Zimbabwe.

nomic development for the City of Brandon, says that although they are coming as employees, after a few years of experience working in Canada they may eventually start a business in the community.

The RNIP program launched in Brandon in 2019 and Trudel says that there were a number of factors as to why Brandon was chosen to take part.

“First off, we have a really solid and demonstrated track record at not only attracting newcomers to our community, but retaining them. If you think back to prior to 2006, we were only attracting on average 65 newcomers a year,” says Trudel. “In 2006 things started changing and our annual immigration numbers increased dramatically. We eventually reached a point during where we welcomed over 1,100 newcomers in one year. For a lack of a better word, we have proven ourselves.”

In addition to RNIP, there are a number of other programs available to newcomers in Brandon who want to start their own businesses. These organizations include Economic Development Brandon, Community Futures Westman, the World Trade Centre in Winnipeg, the Women’s Enterprise Centre of Manitoba, Futurpreneur, the Business Development Bank of Canada, and of course, the Brandon Chamber of Commerce, among many others. Trudel highly recommends getting in touch with an agency to help make the process of starting a business more seamless. She says that it’s important for newcomers to build their credit score as a new Canadian and that people should rely on experts for things that they may not necessarily know as a new business owner, especially one that is new to the country.

“When you think about all the legalities of owning and operating a business, you think about the submissions that need to be made to government bodies, whether that’s GST, PST, payroll deductions, those kinds of things, and understanding it from a Canadian context,” says Trudel. “For a newcomer not familiar with Canadian regulations and requirements, it is easy to miss something and then get in trouble. That’s why I recommend relying on the experts when you need to, which allows the business owner to focus their energy on what they do best.” For Emelio Brown, CEO of Intritech Digital Marketing, asking for help in starting a business really helped him get his idea off the ground.

Brown, who is originally from Kingston, Jamaica, came to Brandon in 2014 to attend Brandon University. He was doing his degree in computer science at the University of Technology, Jamaica and wanted to attend a university in Canada that was inexpensive and had good courses. After graduating from Brandon University, he started Intritech Digital Marketing in 2017 to gain work experience. Although he could have moved away to a bigger city, he liked the size of Brandon, as well as the people.

After five years in business, Brown says that his business has been doing very well, especially after the pandemic hit, with a lot of companies pivoting to online sales and needing help to create websites and expand their social media presence. He credits his success to the people he has met along the way, many of whom he met while doing research into starting his own business.

“People are out there who would love to help. I was scared to ask for help from people who would be strangers, but go out and ask. Ask for someone to be a mentor for you, they would be happy and say sure,” says Brown, who also credits his business partner Tapiwa Magwati from Zimbabwe for his success. “There’s [organizations] who will give you a lot of free resources for starting a new business, as well as fellow business owners who would love to offer free advice. Even myself as well. Anyone who wants to start their own business, just reach out. We love giving advice and love meeting new friends.” ¢