SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Staff of The Re­tail Ware­house (Christ­mas Vil­lage) (TRW) and Cook­ies N Cream Kids Stores (CNCK) turned up the glam­our on Jan­u­ary 4, step­ping out fash­ion-for­ward at Pas­sage to Asia restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas, for the com­pa­nies’ first Staff Awards and Din­ner Cer­e­mo­ny.

The el­e­gant evening cel­e­brat­ed ex­cel­lence, loy­al­ty and growth across the two re­tail brands, with founders and CEOs Trevor and Su­san Ramdeen at the helm, as­sist­ed by me­dia con­sul­tant Natasha Long.

From ten award cat­e­gories, 28 awardees emerged from more than 83 nom­i­nees, re­flect­ing the depth of tal­ent across the or­gan­i­sa­tion. The cat­e­gories in­clud­ed Un­wa­ver­ing Com­mit­ment, Un­wa­ver­ing Loy­al­ty, Ex­cel­lence in Growth and De­vel­op­ment, Ex­cep­tion­al Work Eth­ic, Ris­ing Stars and Emerg­ing Tal­ent, Op­er­a­tional Ex­cel­lence, Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance, Best Per­form­ing and Most Im­proved Branch, Spe­cial Awards and Long Ser­vice.

Among the stand­out cat­e­gories were Ex­cel­lence in Growth and De­vel­op­ment, which saw sev­en win­ners from 12 nom­i­nees, and Ris­ing Stars and Emerg­ing Tal­ent, with five awardees se­lect­ed from 18 nom­i­nees. Oth­er cat­e­gories recog­nised con­sis­tent ded­i­ca­tion and per­for­mance, re­in­forc­ing the com­pa­nies’ em­pha­sis on staff de­vel­op­ment and recog­ni­tion.

The awardees were An­na Gopie, An­drew Fer­nan­dez, Ale­jan­dro Mar­ques, Ariel Es­pinosa, Avinash Balka­ran, Azard Khan, Be­na Gob­in, Can­dice Bor­rel-Glas­gow, De­vi Moon­sam­my, Eli­jah Hamid, Emilio Fer­nan­des, Es­ther Be­las­co, Fa­vian­ny Mejias, Jew­el Reyes, Julio Ar­june, Kate­lyn Rat­tan, Kenya Rogers, Ku­marie Singh, Lean­na Ra­moutar, Maria Sanchez, Milique Gene, Olivia Brown, Re­nee Abra­ham, Se­line Ali, Sha­nia San­di­ford, Shawn Vi­dal, Tri­cia Wal­lace and Vidya Gan­gadeen.

Broth­ers Emilio and An­drew Fer­nan­des re­ceived a Spe­cial Award for their out­stand­ing strate­gic busi­ness plan­ning, pub­lic­i­ty ef­forts and man­age­ment of the Best Per­form­ing Store for 2025 — The Week­end Cloth­ing Store at Pen­ny­wise Plaza, Ch­agua­nas. Es­ther Be­las­co was al­so ho­n­oured with a Long Ser­vice Award, mark­ing more than 22 years of loy­al ser­vice.

Fol­low­ing the na­tion­al an­them, an in­vo­ca­tion was de­liv­ered by re­tired staff mem­ber Wendy Za­ma. Awards were pre­sent­ed by Ale­jan­dro Mar­ques and Natasha Long be­fore guests en­joyed a deluxe din­ner and soft bar. Live en­ter­tain­ment was pro­vid­ed by Roy Mo­hammed from 7 to 8 pm, af­ter which DJ Govi (Govi Sam­lal) kept the dance floor live­ly well in­to the night.

The Ramdeens said the cer­e­mo­ny re­flect­ed their pride in qui­et­ly dri­ving the re­tail sec­tor for more than 45 years, while plac­ing strong val­ue on staff ap­pre­ci­a­tion and de­vel­op­ment. To­day, the busi­ness­es em­ploy more than 100 staff mem­bers across eight lo­ca­tions na­tion­wide, a mile­stone the founders said would not be pos­si­ble with­out the ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment of their team.