Raphael John-Lall

Trinidad and To­ba­go-born An­tho­ny Phills has en­tered the world of pub­lish­ing in an un­con­ven­tion­al way. His Cari­com Com­merce Mag­a­zine, launched al­most a year ago, is not in a tra­di­tion­al print for­mat but is an app that can be down­loaded on iPad and An­droid tablets.Phills, who spent sev­er­al years in Cana­da but now lives in LA, was in the land of his birth last week for An­i­mae Caribe where the spot­light was on his in­no­v­a­tive work.

"The mag­a­zine has been around since 2012 and the gen­e­sis was in Ju­ly when we were in Ja­maica. It was my idea as we were in Ja­maica at a Ja­maica Fest Con­cert."A busi­ness per­son had ap­proached me for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and it got me think­ing. When I re­turned to LA, I got the bright idea to start a mag­a­zine to show­case peo­ple with prod­ucts in the Caribbean is­lands that can be ex­port­ed abroad," he said.

Phills ex­plained that Cari­com Com­merce pro­motes busi­ness peo­ple and prod­ucts from the re­gion to the Caribbean di­as­po­ra, as well as in­ter­na­tion­al clients.Past is­sues have fea­tured the Caribbean pres­ence at the Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Ba­hamas.Phills said he got the help from fam­i­ly, then start­ed work­ing on build­ing ap­pli­ca­tions that would al­low the mag­a­zine to be down­loaded on tablets.

"I got help from my broth­er, a writer, and sis­ter who is a project man­ag­er and a busi­ness per­son in Ja­maica to get our first is­sue off the ground in De­cem­ber," he said.That ini­tial ef­fort cost him be­tween US$50,000 to $75,000 and Phills ad­mit­ted that he had "to put my mon­ey where my mouth is."

"Apart from the writ­ing of the con­tent there is the pro­gram­ming of the app be­cause we are on the iPad and we are on the An­droid, that is what makes it so ex­pen­sive. I did not go to the bank, I fi­nanced this from my pock­et," he said.Phills said in the past he had ap­proached in­vestors about com­ing to the Caribbean but they were re­luc­tant be­cause of stereo­types about the re­gion. If it did not have to do with the beach­es no­body want­ed to know about it. But I told my­self there is mon­ey in this re­gion," he said.

Caribbean con­tent

Phills' mag­a­zine fea­tures en­tre­pre­neurs with unique prod­ucts or those who take tra­di­tion­al prod­ucts and mar­ket them in new ways."So we fea­tured Omar Lewis at the T&T An­i­ma­tion Fes­ti­val. He took a colour­ing book for chil­dren and the Gov­ern­ment gave him mon­ey to make a movie of it."I would like to take this colour­ing book and movie and give it a dig­i­tal for­mat for the Caribbean. I will build it for the An­droid and Ap­ple iPad," he said adding that the aim is to have Caribbean con­tent for users.

"But we do not have that here in the Caribbean. Ap­ple has over one mil­lion ap­pli­ca­tions, and if you look for how much of that is Caribbean it is very few, less than 50."I am pro­duc­ing this mag­a­zine so peo­ple will know where to get the con­tent, so if I have the help of Gov­ern­ment fund­ing then I can de­vel­op the app for the colour­ing book and give it to any child for free from the Caribbean. It is not just a colour­ing book but tells a cul­tur­al sto­ry of the Caribbean."

Tech­nol­o­gy plat­form

Phills said he de­cid­ed to re­lease the mag­a­zine as an app for tablets rather than a Web site be­cause "it talks the lan­guage of the world com­mu­ni­ty.""That is where they are gath­er­ing their in­for­ma­tion and I could not find any­thing from the Caribbean do­ing this.Many peo­ple boast of hav­ing a mag­a­zine but they take the pages, scan them and then put it on an iPad. That is not de­liv­er­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence," he said.He said the sub­scrip­tion price of US$20 a year is low­er than what peo­ple would have to pay in the Unit­ed States.

"This is strict­ly a dig­i­tal app some­one can down­load from iTunes or you down­load from Google Play."This is specif­i­cal­ly for a tablet, so when you buy your tablet you will have Caribbean con­tent on it with re­gard to busi­ness in­for­ma­tion. You down­load it and in the store sec­tion you down­load it for US$20 per an­num, or each edi­tion for US $3.99," he said.Phills said less than 100 peo­ple liv­ing in the Caribbean have sub­scribed to the mag­a­zine so far, but hun­dreds of peo­ple from the Caribbean di­as­po­ra have sub­scribed.

He said he is not yet mak­ing any mon­ey off the project and it is a long term project."It is not break even as yet as it is tech­nol­o­gy. I am not look­ing at the num­bers as yet. My mis­sion is to be in this for the long term and to make a dif­fer­ence," he ex­plained.One of the projects Phills is work­ing on for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture is a Caribbean recipe book in dig­i­tal for­mat.

"The Caribbean has great foods. So you have a recipe and pic­tures of shark and bake and I build the app and spin it around on the screen and when it is clicked on you get the dif­fer­ent flavours."Then peo­ple can or­der it from any­where in the world. It is some­thing I would like to work on with the Min­istry of Trade," he said.Phills be­lieves Cari­com Com­merce Mag­a­zine is unique.

"We are not your stan­dard mag­a­zine. We are here to help and guide Caribbean busi­ness­es. When peo­ple from around the world want to know about the Caribbean they will read our mag­a­zine. We want to high­light the Caribbean as the best place in the world," he said.