En­tre­pre­neurs in T&T are be­ing urged to re­think how they com­pete in to­day’s mar­ket­place.

Rather than fo­cus­ing on low prices, the em­pha­sis is shift­ing to­ward prof­itabil­i­ty, qual­i­ty and in­no­va­tion as the foun­da­tion for sus­tain­able busi­ness suc­cess.

This mes­sage was strong­ly re­in­forced by Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj dur­ing a busi­ness dis­cus­sion last Wednes­day evening, mod­er­at­ed by Krista-Lee Look­it, CEO of That Look­it Brand Mar­ket­ing and Me­dia. The event, which was an ini­tia­tive of the Look­it Brand, un­der­scored that many small busi­ness­es fail not be­cause they lack sales, but be­cause they ne­glect prof­it mar­gins and long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty.

Ma­haraj drew on in­sights he gained from build­ing the Sacha Cos­met­ics brand from its launch in Ju­ly 1979 to mak­ing it a house­hold name for dark­er-hued women around the world.

“You have to watch your gross mar­gins. That’s what fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy is about. You can­not make it for $10 and sell it for $11.

“You’re not go­ing to cov­er your cost. You have to add such val­ue. The first thing is you have to buy the best qual­i­ty in the world,” Ma­haraj ad­vised, as he suc­cinct­ly stat­ed, “Sales is van­i­ty and prof­it is san­i­ty,” high­light­ing that prof­itabil­i­ty re­mains the true mea­sure of busi­ness health.

Ex­pand­ing on this idea, he warned en­tre­pre­neurs against en­gag­ing in price wars with larg­er com­peti­tors stress­ing, “That’s a mis­take I see our en­tre­pre­neurs do. Do not fight on price. The big guns are go­ing to wipe you out” as he not­ed that small busi­ness­es sel­dom have the scale or re­sources to sur­vive such com­pe­ti­tion.

“You’re not go­ing to have the mar­gins to sur­vive. And you can’t go mad with too much mar­ket­ing and too much celebri­ty en­dorse­ments and stuff like that. When the flames die, the em­bers keep you in busi­ness,” he added.

In­stead, lo­cal busi­ness­es should fo­cus on build­ing niche brands that solve spe­cif­ic cus­tomer prob­lems and de­liv­er unique val­ue.

This ap­proach al­lows small­er en­ter­pris­es to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves and cre­ate loy­al cus­tomer bases rather than com­pet­ing on un­sus­tain­able pric­ing strate­gies.

A key theme of the dis­cus­sion was the im­por­tance of brand­ing, pre­sen­ta­tion, and per­ceived val­ue. The min­is­ter used Sacha But­ter­cup Pow­der as a prac­ti­cal ex­am­ple, not­ing that al­though the prod­uct sells lo­cal­ly for about US$14, it com­mands prices as high as US$32 on in­ter­na­tion­al plat­forms like Ama­zon.

This dis­crep­an­cy il­lus­trates that pric­ing is ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mined by what cus­tomers are will­ing to pay, not just pro­duc­tion costs.

“So rather than re­duce your price, raise your price....be­cause the price you sell a prod­uct for has no rel­e­vance to what you pay for it, it’s what peo­ple will pay for it,” Ma­haraj added.

He em­pha­sised that many en­tre­pre­neurs un­der­es­ti­mate the pow­er of pack­ag­ing and brand po­si­tion­ing, even when their prod­ucts are of ex­cel­lent qual­i­ty.

Small im­prove­ments in pre­sen­ta­tion could al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease per­ceived val­ue and jus­ti­fy pre­mi­um pric­ing. At the same time, he cau­tioned against al­low­ing per­fec­tion­ism to de­lay progress, not­ing that while qual­i­ty is crit­i­cal, wait­ing too long to launch a prod­uct could mean miss­ing mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly in the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor, of­ten adopt a more ag­ile ap­proach—launch­ing when the prod­uct is suf­fi­cient­ly strong and re­fin­ing it based on re­al-world feed­back.

Cus­tomer feed­back, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­plaints, was iden­ti­fied as a valu­able dri­ver of im­prove­ment.

Ma­haraj ad­vised that rather than view­ing dis­sat­is­fied cus­tomers neg­a­tive­ly, en­tre­pre­neurs were en­cour­aged to see them as op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­fine their of­fer­ings and strength­en loy­al­ty.

Con­struc­tive crit­i­cism could re­veal in­sights that may not oth­er­wise be ap­par­ent, help­ing busi­ness­es con­tin­u­ous­ly evolve.

The min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed the chal­lenges of pro­tect­ing a suc­cess­ful brand in a glob­al mar­ket, not­ing that coun­ter­feit prod­ucts, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­gions such as Asia and Africa, present on­go­ing threats to brand rep­u­ta­tion.

This re­al­i­ty re­in­forces the need for con­sis­tent qual­i­ty and strong brand man­age­ment to pre­serve trust among con­sumers.

The dis­cus­sion al­so ex­plored the ex­pand­ing role of dig­i­tal trade and gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives aimed at sup­port­ing en­tre­pre­neurs.

Cen­tral to this ef­fort is the TTBi­zLink plat­form, which has be­come an im­por­tant re­source for busi­ness­es nav­i­gat­ing reg­u­la­to­ry process­es and ac­cess­ing mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties. With thou­sands of busi­ness­es al­ready us­ing the plat­form and tens of thou­sands of trans­ac­tions processed in 2025 alone, the plat­form rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward stream­lin­ing trade and im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy.

TTBi­zLink pro­vides tools such as mar­ket analy­sis, ex­port po­ten­tial map­ping, and on­line pay­ment sys­tems, while al­so of­fer­ing guid­ance on reg­u­la­tions and in­vest­ment pro­ce­dures.

As more gov­ern­ment agen­cies in­te­grate in­to the sys­tem, en­tre­pre­neurs would be able to ac­cess com­pre­hen­sive in­for­ma­tion in one place, sim­pli­fy­ing both lo­cal op­er­a­tions and in­ter­na­tion­al trade. While still evolv­ing, the plat­form re­flects a broad­er com­mit­ment to mak­ing the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment more ac­ces­si­ble and re­spon­sive.

Ma­haraj added, “I am a min­is­ter for one year here, and I fo­cused on the ease of do­ing busi­ness and stream­lin­ing these process­es and every week, we have up­dates.”

Com­ple­ment­ing the gov­ern­ment’s per­spec­tive, Look­it chal­lenged en­tre­pre­neurs to re­de­fine growth in an era dom­i­nat­ed by the “at­ten­tion econ­o­my.”

She point­ed out that many mi­cro, small, and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs) strug­gle with mar­ket­ing ca­pac­i­ty and brand build­ing, of­ten re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on per­for­mance mar­ket­ing with­out lever­ag­ing da­ta in­sights.

This ap­proach, she not­ed, leads to di­min­ish­ing re­turns over time.

In­stead, she ad­vo­cat­ed for da­ta-dri­ven strate­gies that in­form brand­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mar­ket po­si­tion­ing.

“With­out da­ta in­sights re­sults in lin­ear de­cline in ad­ver­tis­ing ef­fec­tive­ness. Da­ta in­sights when lever­aged for brand­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­structs and po­si­tion­ing, makes it eas­i­er for a cus­tomer to say ‘Yes’ to your prod­uct and ser­vice. Lever­ag­ing da­ta al­lows busi­ness own­ers to be more strate­gic on lim­it­ed bud­gets and elim­i­nates guess­work,” she said. Look­it al­so high­light­ed dig­i­tal readi­ness as a crit­i­cal fac­tor in achiev­ing dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and agili­ty.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, she ar­gued, is not mere­ly about adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies, but about cre­at­ing sys­tems that en­hance how busi­ness­es op­er­ate and re­spond to change, adding that when com­bined with strong prod­ucts or ser­vices, tools such as AI-dri­ven mar­ket­ing could sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost vis­i­bil­i­ty, de­mand and over­all busi­ness val­ue.

“When AI-dri­ven out­reach is com­bined with a high per­form­ing prod­uct/great ser­vice, it yields a pow­er­ful re­sult which in­creas­es busi­ness’ net worth. Dig­i­tal readi­ness has al­so en­abled con­duct­ing trade and busi­ness fa­cil­i­ta­tion to be­come less daunt­ing for MSMEs. It is im­por­tant for MSMEs to have these in­no­va­tion dri­ven tools for their scal­ing and ex­pan­sion,” she ex­plained.

How­ev­er, tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment must be bal­anced with hu­man el­e­ments such as mind­set and col­lab­o­ra­tion as Look­it said, “On the soft­er skills side, for MSMEs, hav­ing a growth mind­set means know­ing that we will not get it right all of the time, es­pe­cial­ly when faced with high start up costs, car­ry­ing costs and lim­it­ed bud­get.”

By en­gag­ing with oth­ers who share sim­i­lar chal­lenges and am­bi­tions, en­tre­pre­neurs could build ca­pac­i­ty, ex­change knowl­edge, and ac­cel­er­ate growth.

“This lends to why the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty/cir­cle is im­por­tant for MSMEs and en­tre­pre­neurs, to share and build ca­pac­i­ty with a cir­cle of per­sons who tru­ly un­der­stand that ‘vi­sion with­out ac­tion is hal­lu­ci­na­tion.’ Your cir­cle/com­mu­ni­ty shapes your net worth be­cause there is pow­er in your cir­cle and there is pow­er in your net worth on a busi­ness own­ers’ jour­ney of mak­ing their brand to be­come - ‘A Brand For You,’ Look­it fur­ther ad­vised.