Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In the large town of Rom­ford, east of Lon­don, a small shop brims with goods craft­ed in T&T.

Riyadh and Sha­ran Khan who hailed from Mar­aval and Mon­trose re­spec­tive­ly, opened My Tri­ni Shop in Eng­land’s cap­i­tal last Sat­ur­day.

The idea has been around for the last five years, they shared with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view on Wednes­day.

In Au­gust 2020, the pair launched an on­line store to cater to the crav­ings of the Caribbean di­as­po­ra liv­ing in Lon­don, orig­i­nal­ly start­ing off with 50 prod­ucts from T&T but want­ed to go one step fur­ther by es­tab­lish­ing a phys­i­cal store to ex­pand their range of items.

Fi­nal­ly com­ing to fruition, it of­fers 384 prod­ucts all lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured in T&T.

Shar­ing de­tails about the in­spi­ra­tion for the ven­ture, Sha­ran ex­plained, “The thought of My Tri­ni Shop ac­tu­al­ly start­ed from a per­son­al de­sire. Riyadh and I have been liv­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom (UK) for the past 23 years and in that time, you al­ways strug­gle to get Trin­bag­on­ian prod­ucts all in one lo­ca­tion. We drove around Lon­don from shop to shop and we would get the odd Trin­bag­on­ian prod­uct here or there but there was no guar­an­tee or con­sis­ten­cy with it.”

Frus­trat­ed with the lack of con­ve­nience in ac­cess­ing T&T’s unique prod­ucts, Sha­ran soon dis­cov­ered that she and her spouse were not the on­ly T&T na­tion­als in Lon­don crav­ing a taste of the food, snacks and drinks they left back home.

She not on­ly fur­nished her own fam­i­ly with lo­cal items by im­port­ing them in Lon­don, but Sha­ran and Riyadh al­so helped oth­er Caribbean fam­i­lies in the city get their hands on Tri­ni goods, as she in­sist­ed there is a mar­ket for T&T prod­ucts in that Eu­ro­pean city.

“There is a huge mar­ket for Trin­bag­on­ian-on­ly prod­ucts. Our tar­get mar­ket is pre­dom­i­nant­ly the Caribbean di­as­po­ra al­though the prod­ucts do ap­peal to cus­tomers out­side of the di­as­po­ra,” she said.

Among the many prod­ucts ap­pear­ing on the shelves of My Tri­ni Shop are every­day snacks, food and rum that T&T cit­i­zens see in lo­cal gro­cery stores.

These items range from Charles’ Ping Pong, Paula’s pre­serves, an as­sort­ment of herbs and spices, a range of pep­per sauces, de­hy­drat­ed dasheen, mau­by, man­go chut­ney and an as­sort­ment of An­gos­tu­ra rums.

Riyadh and Sha­ran fur­ther shared that they al­so want­ed to im­port prod­ucts from small­er T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers as they be­lieved that sup­port­ing these en­ti­ties is im­por­tant to their eco­nom­ic sus­te­nance.

On in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues that can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact busi­ness Sha­ran said the on­go­ing trade war be­tween Chi­na and the Unit­ed States and the im­po­si­tion of tar­iffs from US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump have not af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, she is brac­ing for height­ened lo­gis­tics costs.

While Sha­ran’s busi­ness is not be­ing im­pact­ed by the trade war, there is one oth­er fac­tor that weighs heav­i­ly on their busi­ness.

“Our main chal­lenge is the height­ened ship­ping costs. Ship­ping from T&T to the UK is pret­ty ex­pen­sive. When you take the ship­ping costs in­to ac­count, it then af­fects the mar­ketabil­i­ty of the prod­uct, but we try our best to work with the cost­ings that we have. It does not turn us off, though. The de­sire for these prod­ucts su­per­sedes the sum of this chal­lenge. If you re­al­ly want a taste of home, you are will­ing to pay the tag for that taste of home,” she said.

Nev­er­the­less, Sha­ran in­sist­ed that not on­ly are T&T’s prod­ucts in de­mand in Lon­don but she said these can com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly made items.

“The prod­ucts that we pur­chase and stock that come out of T&T are of a very high stan­dard. They meet all the needs of the di­as­po­ra - the look, the taste, the feel of the prod­uct - it brings to us ex­act­ly what we need, and it brings to our cus­tomers ex­act­ly what they want, which is a taste of home,” she said.

When com­pared, the prices of the prod­ucts may star­tle Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who are ac­cus­tomed pay­ing a low­er price at lo­cal stores.

For in­stance a pack of Ping Pong that costs cit­i­zens in T&T $6 is £1.19 at My Tri­ni Shop.

That’s around $TT10.50.

Bot­tles of pep­per sauce, Sha­ran said, can range from £2.59 to £6.

A bot­tle of rum av­er­ages £30 or $TT268.

While the prices may sound high­er to the T&T con­sumer ac­cus­tomed to more gen­er­ous lo­cal deals, Sha­ran says UK cus­tomers tend to un­der­stand why they are pay­ing high­er prices on im­port­ed goods.

The busi­nes­sown­ers how­ev­er, have been buoyed by the sup­port they have re­ceived since open­ing their doors just over a week ago.

“We have got a re­al­ly good cus­tomer base. Our open­ing day was huge­ly sup­port­ive. So far, the feed­back has been ab­solute­ly amaz­ing,” they said.

The open­ing day, April 13, saw much fan­fare with An­gos­tu­ra host­ing a rum-tast­ing event with some of their pre­mi­um and mid-range rums at My Tri­ni Shop.

Samuel Shek­le­ton, the com­pa­ny’s UK brand am­bas­sador even trav­elled from Scot­land to lead the rum-tast­ing event and was heart­ened by the feed­back from cus­tomers, in­sist­ing that if there is a prod­uct from T&T that is dif­fi­cult to source, Sha­ran and her hus­band would go at lengths to im­port it in­to the UK.

TTMA pres­i­dent: More of this need­ed

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Dale Par­son ex­pressed pride in the Khans achieve­ment.

How­ev­er, he said he would like to see such ini­tia­tives in oth­er parts of the world where a large Caribbean di­as­po­ra is present.

“I wish I could see more of that in Flori­da and New York. It’s very scarce but this gives op­por­tu­ni­ties to small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs),” Par­son said as he not­ed that such en­deav­ours have the po­ten­tial to in­spire small busi­ness­es in T&T to reach the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na.

“A lot of small busi­ness­es aren’t sure not to com­mer­cialise their prod­ucts. They make it and they make it very well, but they are not sure how to reg­is­ter the prod­uct, how to reg­is­ter with TTBS (T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards), pack­ag­ing as it per­tains to the spe­cial front of the la­bel for the nu­tri­tion­al facts and in­gre­di­ents, es­pe­cial­ly the sug­ar con­tent, so it gives an op­por­tu­ni­ty es­pe­cial­ly to the small­er man­u­fac­tur­ers to as­pire to reach those lev­els,” Par­son said.

He al­so shared words of in­spi­ra­tion to those want­i­ng to ven­ture in­to the world of SMEs.

“If you have a small prod­uct that you are mak­ing un­der your house or in some small ware­house and it reach­es as far as UK, Chi­na, Aus­tralia, you can on­ly feel even more proud as a T&T man­u­fac­tur­er.”