GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

In the hu­mid, in­dus­tri­al heart­land of 1960’s Trinidad, the air was of­ten thick with the pun­gent, metal­lic tang of burn­ing elec­trodes.

This was an era of pro­found trans­for­ma­tion for the is­land’s en­er­gy sec­tor, and amidst the dense forestry zones of Tex­a­co’s vast hold­ings, Habib Edoo was carv­ing out a name for him­self.

He was far more than a labour­er; he was a crafts­man of the oil field—a con­trac­tor whose hands flu­ent­ly spoke the struc­tur­al lan­guage of weld­ing, in­dus­tri­al pipelin­ing and the mas­sive steel skele­tons of tank farms.

Yet, even as he toiled in the heat of the field, Habib’s vi­sion ex­tend­ed far be­yond the im­me­di­ate blue flash of the weld­ing arc.

As the coun­try marks Eid to­mor­row, the oc­ca­sion serves as a time­ly re­flec­tion on the dis­ci­pline and faith that act­ed as the in­ter­nal scaf­fold­ing for his life.

These val­ues served as the true pil­lars up­on which he built his ca­reer.

He re­alised that while he was phys­i­cal­ly con­struct­ing the in­fra­struc­ture of a bur­geon­ing na­tion, the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of tools and tech­ni­cal sup­plies formed the in­dus­try’s true back­bone.

In 1979, that re­al­i­sa­tion birthed a lega­cy.

With a foun­da­tion of grit and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, Habib stepped away to ven­ture in­to di­rect dis­tri­b­u­tion, form­ing Edoo’s Weld­ing and In­dus­tri­al Sup­plies Co Ltd, a lead­ing dis­trib­u­tor of weld­ing and in­dus­tri­al equip­ment, ma­chin­ery, parts and safe­ty equip­ment across T&T and the Caribbean.

It was a piv­ot from build­ing the struc­tures to fu­elling the builders, and it set in mo­tion a mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional en­ter­prise that con­tin­ues to thrive over 60 years lat­er.

To­day, the sto­ry of the Edoo fam­i­ly is told through the eyes of Habib’s son, Im­ti­az, 68, the cur­rent chair­man of the com­pa­ny.

The com­pa­ny’s main of­fice of­fice at 27 Roy­al Road, San Fer­nan­do serves as a bridge be­tween its sto­ried past and its di­ver­si­fied fu­ture.

For Im­ti­az, the busi­ness wasn’t just a ca­reer path; it was his en­tire up­bring­ing.

“I was in­tro­duced to the busi­ness in 1979,” he re­called. “I was 22 years old but we were al­ways in­volved be­fore that—my broth­er Azard and I, we were al­ways in the oil field,” Im­ti­az rec­ol­lect­ed.

That life­long im­mer­sion en­sured that when the time came for a change in lead­er­ship, the tran­si­tion was as seam­less as a per­fect weld.

While Habib re­mained a guid­ing pres­ence un­til his pass­ing at the age of 81 in 2000, his son had al­ready as­sumed the man­tle of CEO by the mid-1980s.

At 26, while many of his peers were still find­ing their foot­ing, Im­ti­az was nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex­i­ties of in­ter­na­tion­al im­port­ing, pur­chas­ing, and the over­all op­er­a­tions of a com­pa­ny that had be­come a vi­tal artery for Trinidad’s in­dus­tri­al sec­tor.

The Edoo phi­los­o­phy has nev­er been sole­ly about the bot­tom line.

Im­ti­az speaks with a qui­et, firm con­vic­tion about the lessons his fa­ther in­stilled—lessons that had less to do with bal­ance sheets and more to do with the soul.

“He taught me to prac­tise the good char­ac­ters of build­ing a busi­ness—the acu­men, and help­ing your com­mu­ni­ty and so­ci­ety,” he said.

This isn’t cor­po­rate PR; it is a lived re­al­i­ty.

Over the years, the fam­i­ly has been in­stru­men­tal in build­ing and main­tain­ing nu­mer­ous mosques and sup­port­ing char­i­ta­ble en­deav­our­ers across all re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tions.

“We try to get in­volved in de­vel­op­ment through­out the years and en­sur­ing or be­ing part of the growth, that we could, in some small way, help in de­vel­op­ing the coun­try to be a bet­ter place,” Im­ti­az stat­ed.

This spir­i­tu­al and eth­i­cal an­chor proved vi­tal as the decades rolled on and the eco­nom­ic land­scape of T&T be­gan to shift.

The easy pros­per­i­ty of the oil boom even­tu­al­ly gave way to the volatile chal­lenges of the mod­ern en­er­gy sec­tor, where sur­vival de­mand­ed more than just tra­di­tion—it de­mand­ed di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and the in­dus­tri­al land­scape

Un­der the broad­er um­brel­la of Edoo’s, the fam­i­ly ex­pand­ed.

While Im­ti­az fo­cussed on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of weld­ing and in­dus­tri­al prod­ucts, his broth­er Azard now 66, took the lead on the re­al es­tate and in­dus­tri­al com­plex side of the fam­i­ly’s port­fo­lio.

Based in Bam­boo Vil­lage, La Ro­main, these com­plex­es pro­vide es­sen­tial ware­hous­ing and fa­cil­i­ties for ma­jor oil-ser­vic­ing com­pa­nies, en­sur­ing the fam­i­ly re­mained teth­ered to the en­er­gy sec­tor while di­ver­si­fy­ing their as­set base.

This strate­gic ex­pan­sion has trans­formed the com­pa­ny in­to a ti­tan of sup­ply.

The mod­ern it­er­a­tion of the com­pa­ny is a far cry from the sin­gle ma­chine shop in Point Fortin that Habib once man­aged in the 60s.

To­day, they are a crit­i­cal sup­pli­er to the na­tion’s biggest play­ers—not just in en­er­gy, but al­so in man­u­fac­tur­ing.

From food gi­ants like Nes­tle and Carib to in­dus­tri­al heavy­weights like At­lantic, the Edoo fam­i­ly pro­vides vi­tal weld­ing sup­plies and oth­er in­dus­tri­al prod­ucts that keep the wheels of T&T’s in­dus­try turn­ing.

Weath­er­ing the storm

The road hasn’t been with­out its pot­holes, such as the un­prece­dent­ed glob­al shut­down of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

That pe­ri­od served as a bru­tal les­son for the in­dus­try, forc­ing a to­tal re-eval­u­a­tion of how to keep a busi­ness afloat when the world stopped mov­ing. While the pan­dem­ic was a sud­den, sharp shock to the sys­tem, it was on­ly the first in a se­ries of chal­lenges that would test the com­pa­ny’s struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty.

“We strug­gled and we sur­vived,” Im­ti­az ad­mit­ted can­did­ly, re­flect­ing on the dif­fi­cul­ties the com­pa­ny en­dured dur­ing those lock­down years. “Un­like most of our peers—many in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies in our sec­tor that sim­ply fell to the way­side—we con­tin­ued to strive. Our fo­cus was on main­tain­ing our em­ploy­ees and keep­ing them hap­py and safe.”

This com­mit­ment to the work­force dur­ing a time of glob­al in­sta­bil­i­ty pro­vid­ed a moral an­chor, yet it did lit­tle to al­le­vi­ate the ex­ter­nal eco­nom­ic pres­sures that fol­lowed in the pan­dem­ic’s wake.

As the world re­opened, the com­pa­ny found it­self fac­ing a down­turn in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor and a tight­en­ing grip on the for­eign ex­change mar­ket. To­day, these forex woes re­main the pri­ma­ry op­er­a­tional hur­dle.

The gap be­tween sur­viv­ing a health cri­sis and main­tain­ing a growth tra­jec­to­ry is bridged by the need for high-grade weld­ing and in­dus­tri­al prod­ucts—im­ports that de­mand a steady stream of in­creas­ing­ly scarce for­eign cur­ren­cy.

Se­cur­ing this cur­ren­cy is a con­stant strug­gle, yet the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate these fi­nan­cial straits is re­flect­ed in its cur­rent sta­bil­i­ty.

To­day, the group em­ploys ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 peo­ple across its var­i­ous en­ti­ties, a tes­ta­ment to its re­silience in a cli­mate that has swal­lowed many small­er com­peti­tors.

Third gen­er­a­tion takes an in­ter­est

As the world changed, so did the lead­er­ship.

The gen­er­a­tional ba­ton has been passed once more, this time to Im­ti­az’s son, Iza­an.

At 40, he rep­re­sents the third gen­er­a­tion of Edoo lead­er­ship.

Armed with a BSc and a Mas­ter’s in the field of busi­ness, he serves as co-chair­man and CEO, run­ning the day-to-day op­er­a­tions with a mod­ern, an­a­lyt­i­cal lens.

“It is a gen­er­a­tional busi­ness,” his fa­ther said with pride. “He al­so want­ed to be a busi­ness per­son. We grew up in­volved, and the goal was al­ways to com­plete and con­tin­ue do­ing the same thing in life.”

The fu­ture now points to­ward fur­ther hori­zons.

There is a small-scale in­vest­ment and a watch­ful eye on Guyana, wait­ing for the right mo­ment to ful­ly plant the Edoo flag in that bur­geon­ing mar­ket through po­ten­tial man­u­fac­tur­ing ven­tures.

“Guyana is just on a small scale, yes. But we’re not there as yet. We made a lit­tle in­vest­ment, but we have not ful­ly gone in there yet,” Im­ti­az ex­plained.

As he looks back on a jour­ney that be­gan in the weld­ing shops of Tex­a­co and now spans three gen­er­a­tions, Im­ti­az of­fered a sober­ing piece of ad­vice for the next gen­er­a­tion of en­tre­pre­neurs.

It’s a mes­sage that strips away the glam­our of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with the “CEO” ti­tle.

“Make the sac­ri­fice,” he ad­vised. “A lot of peo­ple want to go in­to busi­ness, but they don’t want to make the sac­ri­fice; they just want it to be easy. It’s not an easy road. It is a very dif­fi­cult road to trav­el—long, tir­ing, and en­dur­ing. It’s not some­thing that hap­pens overnight.”