Lisa-Marie Daniel is no typ­i­cal woman; al­though at first glance, she may be seem­ing­ly qui­et and shy, she is cer­tain­ly very far from that. Af­ter en­gag­ing in con­ver­sa­tions with this silent pow­er­house, I gath­ered that she is not on­ly as­sertive and con­fi­dent, but is charged with the great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing the state-ap­point­ed agency - The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fash­ion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Fash­ionTT).

Fash­ionTT was es­tab­lished in 2013 with the man­date to stim­u­late and fa­cil­i­tate the busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and ex­port ac­tiv­i­ty of the fash­ion in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go to gen­er­ate na­tion­al wealth. As a sub­sidiary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cre­ative In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Cre­ativeTT), Fash­ionTT pro­vides ser­vices for lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try stake­hold­ers, pri­mar­i­ly fash­ion de­sign­ers in the ar­eas of fash­ion ap­par­el, func­tion­al ap­par­el, ac­ces­sories and sup­port.

Af­ter com­plet­ing Or­di­nary Lev­el (now called CSEC) at Diego Mar­tin Sec­ondary School, Lisa-Marie went on to com­plete her Ad­vanced Lev­el ed­u­ca­tion at Poly­tech­nic Sixth Form School, then pur­sued a de­gree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). Since grad­u­at­ing from UWI, she has been mak­ing waves in her ca­reer with­in the Busi­ness and Fi­nance sec­tors for over 10 years. She has held se­nior po­si­tions with­in both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors at lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al banks, man­ag­ing port­fo­lios com­pris­ing of con­glom­er­ates and SMEs (small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es). Pri­or to tak­ing on the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er post at Fash­ionTT, she was the Fi­nan­cial Comp­trol­ler at the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB)

Lisa-Marie ex­plained, that fol­low­ing the for­mu­la­tion of Fash­ionTT’s strate­gic plan, which was rolled out in 2015, it is un­der her stew­ard­ship to im­ple­ment this plan which has three de­vel­op­men­tal goals – to fos­ter ex­port-ready prod­ucts, to cre­ate jobs and to fur­ther de­vel­op ca­pac­i­ty. She said, “This plan will po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go as a ma­jor fash­ion hub, strength­en the ca­pac­i­ty of fash­ion prac­ti­tion­ers to par­tic­i­pate in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and in­crease growth and rev­enue at the na­tion­al and firm lev­els.”

She al­so point­ed out that un­der the strate­gic plan there is al­so a pro­gramme called the Val­ue Chain In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (VCIP), which she con­sid­ers the cor­ner­stone of the plan. This pro­gramme as­sess­es lo­cal firms by an in­de­pen­dent in­ter­na­tion­al pan­el that will cat­e­gorise firms in­to one of the four lev­els of the VCIP - The Glob­al Val­ue Chain (GVC), Non-Glob­al Val­ue Chain, Busi­ness Ad­vi­so­ry and the Strate­gic Train­ing.

The ex­pec­ta­tions of the strate­gic plan al­so in­clude the re­al­i­sa­tion of at least two firms in the fash­ion/ap­par­el sec­tor achiev­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sales in ex­cess of $10 mil­lion, and col­lec­tive sales across the in­dus­try of $75 mil­lion. In ad­di­tion, the goal is to em­pow­er in ex­cess of 300 fash­ion ser­vice com­pa­nies and fash­ion com­pa­nies in the ex­port­ing of their prod­ucts.

While Lisa-Marie ad­mit­ted that man­ag­ing an im­por­tant man­date and port­fo­lio such as the one giv­en in the Strate­gic Plan of Fash­ionTT is not no easy one; her love for fash­ion cou­pled with her ex­ten­sive pro­fes­sion­al work ex­pe­ri­ence has equipped her for the se­ri­ous tasks and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of her po­si­tion. “I’ve al­ways had a love to­wards fash­ion and I es­pe­cial­ly love to sup­port lo­cal fash­ion. My pas­sion for fash­ion does not re­quire that I know how to make a gar­ment, but rather to un­der­stand the busi­ness as­pect of it - how to de­vel­op the brand and per­son be­hind it, mar­ket it, de­vel­op busi­ness plans and pro­mote the in­dus­try to a lev­el where it can be­come glob­al­ly vi­able.”

The San­ta Cruz res­i­dent al­so not­ed that she is a liv­ing tes­ta­ment that one does not have to at­tend a “pres­tige school” to de­ter­mine one’s suc­cess. Hard work, am­bi­tion and de­ter­mi­na­tion are the qual­i­ties that will help one to suc­ceed. “Gen­er­al­ly I do have those long 12-hour days more as a rule than an ex­cep­tion. How­ev­er, what we are do­ing here is cre­at­ing gen­uine im­pact and chang­ing peo­ple’s lives while al­so work­ing to change an in­dus­try. De­sign­ers on av­er­age have re­port­ed an in­crease in sales to the tune of 32 per cent since start­ing with us but some have seen that fig­ure go as high as 162 per cent. We’ve seen tal­ent emerge in San­gre Grande and go on to sup­ply mar­kets in dis­tant parts of the world – so it’s work that I en­joy,” she said.

Lisa-Marie con­tin­ues to in­vest in self-de­vel­op­ment and ed­u­ca­tion even with a hec­tic ca­reer. In ad­di­tion to hav­ing a Bach­e­lor’s de­gree and an MBA, she is cur­rent­ly em­bark­ing on her Doc­tor­ate in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion. When she is not work­ing, Lisa Marie en­joys spend­ing her time with her fi­ancé, her daugh­ter Drisana as well as with her par­ents and her dogs. Most re­cent­ly, she has start­ed to dab­ble in the culi­nary arts, cook­ing up a storm with her fi­ancé in the kitchen. Check out my Q & A with Lisa-Marie.

1) What key chal­lenges and is­sues with­in the fash­ion sec­tor can you say is be­ing ad­dressed with the as­sis­tance of your or­gan­i­sa­tion?

The key chal­lenges and is­sues as high­light­ed by the strate­gic plan for the fash­ion in­dus­try and stake­hold­ers are in Busi­ness Acu­men, Fi­nanc­ing, Re­tail Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Pro­duc­tion.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion has been ad­dress­ing these chal­lenges via the ad­min­is­tra­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of the Val­ue Chain In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (VCIP), which sup­ports an es­ti­mat­ed 100 lo­cal de­sign­ers an­nu­al­ly.

2) Where would you like to see the fash­ion in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go with­in the next five years?

First­ly, I would like to see the in­dus­try be­ing recog­nised lo­cal­ly, where­by every­one buys lo­cal and has an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for our tal­ent and cul­ture; for our in­dus­try to stand out and be known on a vast re­gion­al and glob­al scale for our unique and beau­ti­ful aes­thet­ic which comes with a pre­mi­um qual­i­ty and for our in­dus­try to mean­ing­ful­ly con­tribute to our coun­try’s wealth and GDP.

3) How would you de­fine your per­son­al sense of style?

I would say mod­ern, min­i­mal, so­phis­ti­cat­ed but fun.

4) What do you like about Fash­ion?

From a very young age, I al­ways loved to dress up in at­trac­tive clothes, ac­ces­sories and shoes. I have al­so de­signed some of the cloth­ing in my clos­et, which was there­after pro­duced by lo­cal de­sign­ers. I think fash­ion forms a very im­por­tant role for an in­di­vid­ual. When you look and feel good, it boosts your self-con­fi­dence in your per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life.

5) Do you think the pri­vate sec­tor should play a role or be in­volved in build­ing the ad­vance­ment of the fash­ion in­dus­try in T&T?

Yes, there are so many op­por­tu­ni­ties for the pri­vate sec­tor to col­lab­o­rate and in­vest in paths such as Man­u­fac­tur­ing, Re­tail Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Mar­ket­ing and Eq­ui­ty En­gage­ments. The fash­ion in­dus­try is a lu­cra­tive one and can de­liv­er the de­sired ROI.

6) What do you en­joy the most about your job?

I re­al­ly love to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in per­sons’ lives and to see the in­dus­try progress (rev­enue and ef­fi­cien­cy wise) be­cause of the ini­tia­tives Fash­ionTT has been im­ple­ment­ing.

7) What ad­vice do you have for bud­ding fash­ion de­sign­ers who are try­ing to build a vi­able busi­ness with­in the in­dus­try?

Stay fo­cused, work hard, de­liv­er on time and most im­por­tant­ly, know your cus­tomer. Though the path may seem long, through con­sis­ten­cy and de­ter­mi­na­tion, suc­cess is im­mi­nent.

8) Do you think enough re­spect is giv­en to cre­atives in T&T? Yes or No and why?

Yes, I do be­lieve re­spect is giv­en by those who are aware of our lo­cal skill and tal­ent. How­ev­er, I think a lot more mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion should be done by our cre­atives to sen­si­tise the pub­lic, as this would lead to a more wide­spread ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

9) What else should we know about Lisa-Marie Daniel and or Fash­ion TT?

We are a hard­work­ing team, at Fash­ionTT; we are al­ways open to speak­ing with stake­hold­ers on av­enues in which Fash­ionTT can help. Give us a call at 628-1156 or email in­fo@fash­iontt.co.tt

PHO­TO CRED­ITS

Pho­tog­ra­phy: Ker­ron Ri­ley

Styling/Cre­ative Di­rec­tion: Bri­an Matthew

Wardrobe: Charu Lochan Dass & Pul­chri­tude De­sign House

Make­up: Ashon­da James

Hair: Sha­nia James