The Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ)/World Bank SME loan has already assisted one notable operative in the event management business to multiply sales tenfold. We sat down with Orville Arscott of Party Time Services to hear his account of this success story.

Arscott looks quite at home at the helm of a fast-growing business in… party supplies, and located in … Grant’s Pen, a community with a dubious reputation for gritty streets and simmering volatility.

Having acquired a virtually unknown entity with fairly modest annual sales of just over $2.5M, today it’s closer to $30M. What did he do to get there? “We have brought in new product lines etc. I realised we had a lot of third party services as part of our leading sales transactions. In an attempt to in retain some of that income, we expanded

the line, retained the income, while holding on to the assets acquired to deliver the service… this being able to further exploit its value.”

Probing further, the Party Time CEO reveals that this major turning point in the development of their sales portfolio could also be largely attributed to a financial partnership with the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ). “As a matter of fact, the loan which we took from DBJ in 2015 helped us to expand. We used it mainly to expand our stock and variety of tents, and we now have configurations up to a 60×30, a rarity in the local market,” he said.