The un­of­fi­cial, of­fi­cial brand of Trinidad and To­ba­go is prepar­ing to go on sale on Ama­zon.

Kee­gan Si­mon, head cre­ative and own­er of 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic, con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that he has spent much of the past few months step­ping up mass pro­duc­tion while al­so iron­ing out lo­gis­tics to en­able his prod­uct to be avail­able on the e-com­merce gi­ant.

“I think I’ve suc­cess­ful­ly done the ma­tric­u­la­tion in­to mass pro­duc­tion, which I start­ed ear­li­er this year. Ac­tu­al­ly, I start­ed late last year with re­search and de­vel­op­ment, and now hav­ing the prod­ucts, hav­ing the T-shirts, now the hats are com­ing soon. That whole sense of mul­ti­ple amounts of it. The next step, ob­vi­ous­ly, is just dis­tri­b­u­tion. So now get­ting a chance to se­cure and put good roots in the North Amer­i­can sec­tor, as well as 2026 open­ing a greater di­a­logue in Eu­rope,” Si­mon said about the push to put his brand fur­ther through the plat­form.

The move al­so co­in­cides with the ten-year an­niver­sary of his pop­u­lar “Watch­words” shirt, which has be­come a sig­na­ture piece for the brand, giv­en its pop­u­lar­i­ty both lo­cal­ly and abroad to this day.

He said, “This is the tenth an­niver­sary of the Watch­words (shirt) that I’ve cre­at­ed, which has some­how been all over the world, and peo­ple pur­chase it al­most every day. So I’m very for­tu­nate for that. Al­so, with the mile­stone of the In­de­pen­dence (of T&T) where I start­ed this jour­ney go­ing in­to the Trinidad To­ba­go love, I would say, is the ex­pan­sion of the brand and hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be in more ter­ri­to­ries.”

The de­sign­er ex­plained he had plans to sell his prod­ucts on Ama­zon from in­cep­tion, but ad­mit­ted the past decade had been one of learn­ing how to get to that lev­el.

Si­mon said, “Every­body has great dreams of do­ing all these cool things. But I think that I have tak­en a while to get to (this point). I wish I could have done it soon­er. But you’re al­ways in your own way, and you al­ways think that you want things to be per­fect or cer­tain process­es or any­thing. And I think I any longer in hind­sight, I think this is how I need to do these things to be­come and reach where I am right now. So I’m a bit an­gry at my­self, but I’m not okay with it, be­cause I’m so com­fort­able un­der­stand­ing the val­ue chain from in­cep­tion, the com­ple­tion, and now it’s just to start that next plateau and see how I could be able to grow and be bet­ter.”

He felt the time tak­en had al­lowed him to learn key lessons about his brand and busi­ness, in­clud­ing un­der­stand­ing the val­ue chain and the im­pact of the brand. In the past few years, he re­alised the brand had more of an in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal than he ini­tial­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed. That be­ing said, de­vel­op­ing the ma­chin­ery to have the brand ready for sale on such a vast plat­form was a sig­nif­i­cant learn­ing curve.

“There’s been many, many years of try­ing to un­der­stand the process of Ama­zon try­ing to fig­ure out if it’s the right step, be­cause con­tex­tu­al­ly, some­times you will want your brand, or any brand, to be in a par­tic­u­lar light. Hav­ing some­thing like Ama­zon may not be the route that peo­ple might take, or oth­er peo­ple who ab­solute­ly start on Ama­zon and then grow from there,” said Si­mon, “The con­ve­nience of con­nec­tiv­i­ty and get­ting the prod­uct out to peo­ple, pri­mar­i­ly in North Amer­i­ca, be­cause Ama­zon, right now is for Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co, for me to even have that op­por­tu­ni­ty, which is so much eas­i­er, and I keep us­ing word con­ve­nient, but so much eas­i­er and bet­ter for cus­tomers to get the items in a time­ly man­ner. Ama­zon is the next step.”

He did note there were cer­tain steps in the process which proved a bit more bur­den­some than oth­ers, but his ex­pe­ri­ence of shop­ping the brand via pop-up shops and trade shows over the years helped him along.

Si­mon said, “Talk­ing to peo­ple about it, hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with sales reps and every­thing, and tak­ing my time with the process. I don’t want to rush in­to know­ing that every­thing is pret­ty much se­cure. The next step is now pro­vid­ing the items to them, and now go­ing through that process of prod­uct man­age­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

The loom­ing is­sue of forex has al­so been a chal­lenge the de­sign­er has had to nav­i­gate, but he felt the move was a give and take sit­u­a­tion of­ten found in the busi­ness land­scape.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he not­ed the re­cent im­po­si­tion of tar­iffs added an­oth­er vari­able to the equa­tion, which he is yet to ex­pe­ri­ence.

On Au­gust 1, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump im­posed in­creased tar­iffs on sev­er­al coun­tries. Trinidad and To­ba­go saw an in­crease from 10 per cent to 15 per cent, Si­mon did not wish to dis­close where he ex­ports his shirts for mass pro­duc­tion but would on­ly state he has looked to the Asian mar­ket for the process. In­dia saw an 50 per cent tar­iff im­po­si­tion in Au­gust. Chi­na was threat­ened with a tar­iff as high as 200 per cent, but is cur­rent­ly on a tar­iff pause while ne­go­ti­a­tions with the US gov­ern­ment are on­go­ing.

He urged oth­er lo­cal de­sign­ers to have faith in their prod­uct, but be pa­tient in terms of de­vel­op­ing their brands and busi­ness­es as he ac­knowl­edged it was a try­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“Stick to what you were do­ing be­fore. Al­ways be open to un­der­stand­ing your land­scape, and then when you feel com­fort­able, he said, “For­eign ex­change is very, very hard as well, find ways to ei­ther pro­cure for­eign ex­change or have con­ver­sa­tions with the bank to make sure that if you need to buy com­mer­cial stuff that I buy in par­tic­u­lar, you need US dol­lars to buy it. So hav­ing great re­la­tion­ships with the banks and be­ing not nec­es­sar­i­ly in queue, but hav­ing that op­por­tu­ni­ty to al­ways get that mon­ey quick enough is a good rap­port, but it’s a cap­tur­ing too, be­cause iron­i­cal­ly, when you get these sales from a plat­form like Ama­zon, for ex­am­ple, you get paid in US.”

He con­tin­ued, “So you just have to work, grind hard enough un­til you ac­tu­al­ly start to build your own well of in­come from that side as well. But it’s just see­ing the course, and hon­est­ly, just tak­ing your time. A lot of peo­ple don’t give them­selves enough time to re­al­ly go through the whole gamut of what you’re sup­posed to be do­ing.”

Si­mon al­so felt that he had to over­come some lev­el of anx­i­ety con­cern­ing ac­cep­tance on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, but he felt many lo­cal cre­ators were sim­i­lar­ly guilty of un­der­selling them­selves.

“It’s been those lit­tle things. There was one time when I was walk­ing in New York, and ran­dom­ly, I saw some­body walk­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion wear­ing my shirt and I had no idea who that per­son was. And those are the kind of things you just see this is some­thing that needs to be ex­plored more,” he said.

Apart from push­ing his mass pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties, the 1ndi­vid­ual Aes­thet­ic cre­ator has been work­ing on mar­ket­ing. His cur­rent slo­gan: The un­of­fi­cial of­fi­cial brand of Trinidad and To­ba­go.