The Bermuda Jam Factory has had to become more creative to continue to grow in a difficult economy.Joel McDonell, who runs the company with his partner Grant Kennedy, said the company has bargained and bartered its way forward since its inception.“We’ve leveraged jam for various marketing services and other things,” he said.“We’ve had to work to overcome the high expense of doing business in Bermuda, and we’ve been trying to find alternative ways of overcoming those issues.”Along with cooking, bottling and selling all their pepper jams themselves, Mr McDonell and Mr Kennedy actively market the product, personally giving out samples of the spicy jam at various markets across the Island since 2004.“We’re out there, we’re in front of people. We’ve done that from the beginning,” Mr McDonell said.“Some things we’re looking at for the next season is grouping with other products in our category and finding ways to do joint marketing to share the cost.“It’s an idea that a lot of people are doing in North America. Companies are working together to get shared marketing expense, and if they have to do the same tasks, not duplicating them and spending extra money.”He said when the company started up, he reached out to other local businesses and organisations to try to work out how they could create a successful business.“It really was a challenge. There really wasn’t a road map to say this is how you start up a business in Bermuda,” he said.“We worked with Chamber of Commerce. They have been great, introducing us to different suppliers and that sort of thing.“The Government also has some excellent programmes, the Entrepreneur Week was an excellent programme. There are great ways of getting exposure and get your companies out there, small and medium-sized.”Useful website: www.bermudajamfactory.com.