Fash­ion de­sign­er Pe­ter Elias is mak­ing a bold move in the mid­dle of an eco­nom­ic melt­down and glob­al health pan­dem­ic to open a new busi­ness. Giv­en the daunt­ing cir­cum­stances that the coun­try faces in this COVID-19 pe­ri­od, he has had his doubts, but he has de­cid­ed to go ahead with this ven­ture. "I have sec­ond-guessed the de­ci­sion a few times, but I re­main fo­cused and be­lieve in what we of­fer, in my team and the many loy­al clients we serve," he told the Sun­day Guardian.

Elias, who has been in the fash­ion and beau­ty busi­ness for more than 33 years, ad­mit­ted that he was hit hard with re­stric­tions on malls and few­er cus­tomers, but is de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue fight­ing to stay in busi­ness. He said COVID or not they are con­stant­ly try­ing to in­no­vate and recre­ate to re­main rel­e­vant.

Tell us, Pe­ter Elias, how long have you been in­volved in busi­ness in T&T, and in the beau­ty and fash­ion busi­ness in par­tic­u­lar?

I’ve been in the fash­ion busi­ness for over 33 years. I spent 15 years in the Miss Trinidad and To­ba­go in­dus­try. We al­so cre­ate ed­i­to­r­i­al con­tent and style im­ages for cam­paigns.

Would you say that your name speaks for it­self in the busi­ness world and the beau­ty and fash­ion in­dus­try in par­tic­u­lar?

I’ve been around a while and have been con­sis­tent, so it’s won­der­ful that many as­so­ciate our name/brand with style, ser­vice and longevi­ty.

In this time of a pan­dem­ic, where the world is strug­gling with COVID-19 and the eco­nom­ic fall­out that it has brought, this a very bold and brave move to open a new busi­ness. What made you de­cide on this move and at the par­tic­u­lar lo­ca­tion?

We closed our Eller­slie lo­ca­tion be­fore COVID to ex­pand at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall with the in­ten­tion to house women, men and ca­reer wear. It is a chal­leng­ing time and I have sec­ond-guessed the de­ci­sion a few times, but I re­main fo­cused and be­lieve in what we of­fer, in my team and the many loy­al clients we serve. In this busi­ness like all oth­ers, it's all about lo­ca­tion.

Do you see this as a sea­son­al move for Christ­mas to Car­ni­val? What is the re­al con­cept be­hind this busi­ness?

I’ve nev­er been in the sea­son­al busi­ness, al­though we have sea­son­al spikes. I am here to make clients feel con­fi­dent and look beau­ti­ful and for­tu­nate­ly, it’s been good so far, at least be­fore COVID.

Do you have an es­tab­lished cus­tomer base or do you hope to at­tract new clien­tele? Where do you ex­pect your cus­tomer base to come from?

We’re for­tu­nate in that we serve a wide ar­ray of clients from the length and breadth of T&T. I do see this lo­ca­tion as bring­ing dif­fer­ent traf­fic to that of my cur­rent and pre­vi­ous lo­ca­tions.

Will this move to open a new busi­ness see you pro­duce and fea­ture lo­cal items? Will this be a move to en­cour­age peo­ple to buy lo­cal and sup­port lo­cal artists, crafts­men and en­tre­pre­neurs?

We pro­duce our own col­lec­tions and al­so stock a wide range at com­pet­i­tive pric­ing to sat­is­fy our wide ar­ray of clients and their needs, keep­ing in mind that clients are ex­posed to so­cial me­dia and in­ter­net shop­ping and usu­al­ly able to trav­el, so I need to com­pete with style and price points both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to please them.

Does mar­ket re­search sug­gest this sort of busi­ness is a vi­able one?

Cloth­ing is an elas­tic de­mand item, plus it's a tough time in this eco­nom­ic cli­mate. Be­cause our brand is trust­ed, we’ve been able to carve a niche in this mar­ket, com­bin­ing ex­cel­lent choice, com­pet­i­tive pric­ing and un­par­al­leled ser­vice, so I think we stand alone which makes us vi­able.

Would the very strin­gent mea­sures put in place by the bank­ing sec­tor af­fect your busi­ness?

We are al­ready af­fect­ed by the strin­gent mea­sures for a few years now, but this has forced us to stock even bet­ter, work even hard­er and sell our best.

What about the re­stric­tions in place for COVID-19 and malls com­plain­ing about ten­ants clos­ing busi­ness­es as few­er cus­tomers are com­ing out and peo­ple are buy­ing less, do you have any con­cerns about this?

I’ve been af­fect­ed. It’s been hard. I an­tic­i­pate it’ll con­tin­ue to be dif­fi­cult for the com­ing months or year, but recog­nise it's a pan­dem­ic that had af­fect­ed the world and it’s not just me. I live to fight an­oth­er day and we shall con­tin­ue forg­ing ahead.

How do you think COVID-19 will im­pact on your new busi­ness; is this an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­no­vate, recre­ate?

COVID or not, we are con­stant­ly try­ing to in­no­vate and recre­ate our­selves and re­main rel­e­vant as this busi­ness is in­cred­i­bly com­pet­i­tive. As you can ap­pre­ci­ate, COVID has hit hard, but with the ac­tiv­i­ty we feel pos­i­tive about this new lo­ca­tion.

Will you en­cour­age oth­ers to open busi­ness­es at this time?

It re­al­ly de­pends on the kind of busi­ness, the need, the rel­e­vance. This is a tough time for most busi­ness­es with a few ex­cep­tions, for ex­am­ple food and tech­nol­o­gy.

Have you been able to ne­go­ti­ate spe­cial rates for your busi­ness? How many peo­ple will be em­ployed at your es­tab­lish­ment? Will they be spe­cial­ists or reg­u­lar peo­ple on the job mar­ket?

It’s been dif­fi­cult but we’ve been able to main­tain our staff who are spe­cial­ly trained. One of the main rea­sons I felt com­pelled to move ahead with the Long Cir­cu­lar lo­ca­tion is that they have been so en­cour­ag­ing and ac­com­mo­dat­ing.

Have some of these peo­ple worked in your es­tab­lish­ments be­fore?

Al­though this may seem repet­i­tive, hav­ing closed Eller­slie I al­ready have trained staff.

How many spin-off jobs will your busi­ness be cre­at­ing dur­ing this COVID pan­dem­ic where thou­sands are on the bread­line?

It took a vil­lage lit­er­al­ly to build out. My con­struc­tion crew, con­trac­tors, main­te­nance crew…when you vis­it you would bet­ter ap­pre­ci­ate.

I know that you have closed down your op­er­a­tions at Eller­slie Plaza which ex­ist­ed for decades, as well as a unit of your busi­ness in West­mall, what was the rea­son for this?

It was al­ways the plan to close our Eller­slie store and move to a lo­ca­tion with more foot traf­fic that’s larg­er and can house all that we of­fer un­der one roof. COVID has­tened this at West­mall where we com­bined our three op­er­a­tions un­der one roof. The next step is to get a big­ger, bet­ter-sit­u­at­ed lo­ca­tion there.

Do you be­lieve enough is be­ing done by the Gov­ern­ment to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and put in­cen­tives in place for busi­ness­es dur­ing this pe­ri­od?

One of the ben­e­fits of the Gov­ern­ment keep­ing all em­ploy­ees dur­ing COVID is the domi­no ef­fect it’s had on the en­tire econ­o­my, my busi­ness to a less­er de­gree as oc­ca­sions are very lim­it­ed due to re­stric­tions.

What's your plan to make it through this pe­ri­od?

I be­lieve in our peo­ple, our clients recog­nise and ap­pre­ci­ate style, our in­dus­try is alive and kick­ing. Look at how our peo­ple dress for Car­ni­val fetes for ex­am­ple. So in the long run, I see our val­ue. We just have to make it through this.