Cayman has been going through a massive growth spurt, jumping from 68,000 people in 2020 to a projected 100,000 by next year.

Bermudian Randy Stafford, owner of Stafford Flooring, is there to catch the resulting wave of opportunity.

“It has been growing ever since I set up here in 2010,” said Mr Stafford who also runs Stafford Flooring in Bermuda.

Cayman policy regarding building height caps has recently been revamped, particularly on Seven Mile Beach, changing from two storeys to ten for specialised luxury developments.

The ten-storey Grand Hyatt Grand Cayman Hotel and Residences is expected to open in August.

The ONE|GT in George Town received special permission to open with 11 storeys and is expected to come on line shortly, while low-rise Mandarin Oriental Grand Cayman will open in 2028.

“All the major hotels are in this corridor, as well as condominiums,” Mr Stafford explained.

The price of condos in this area — Cayman’s equivalent of Bermuda’s South Shore — have rocketed.

“A penthouse condominium was just sold for around $40 million,” he said.

At another development, the Lacovia, a former two-storey complex was demolished and replaced with three ten-storey condo towers.

“The units are going for around $3 million to $4 million a pop,” Mr Stafford said. “They are all going to need flooring.”

Stafford Flooring also sells countertops and has a sister company dealing in Haworth office furniture.

Their client list includes Butterfield Bank, which is based in a seven‑storey building in George Town.

When Cayman announced the finalists for the Governor’s Award for Design and Construction Excellence, Mr Stafford’s footprints were everywhere.

He was the flooring contractor for finalists Hotel Indigo and Cricket Square 7 (Pavilion East), and the ultimate winner, the John Gray High School project, a school that serves more than a 1,000 students and doubles as a hurricane shelter.

Mr Stafford said Cayman has historically offered a more flexible regulatory climate than Bermuda, especially in work permits and business development.

He said it remains comparatively “user friendly”, although there has been a clear shift towards stronger expectations around local workforce development.

“They are making companies more responsible,” he said. “They are asking for apprentice programmes, so we do have Caymanians working with us.”

For him, that is not just a compliance obligation, but good business sense.

“Cayman’s labour force draws heavily from Jamaica and the Philippines, alongside Canadians and Europeans,” he said.

Despite the place’s buoyancy, Mr Stafford is acutely aware that global macro forces do not stop at the shoreline. Tariffs, supply-chain disruptions and geopolitical instability have fed directly into his cost base.

Where manufacturers once applied 3 to 4 per cent annual price increases, more recent rises have been in the 5 to 7 per cent range, with a new round of 5 to 8 per cent hikes now being felt, linked to the geopolitical struggle in the Middle East and the disruption in the energy business.

“Our freight costs have gone up, and will continue to go up with the war,” Mr Stafford said.

He questioned if these increases would ever deflate.

“There are certain things you can control when doing business, and things you cannot control,” he said. “As the markets change we will have to change with them.”