Last Thurs­day, Kim­ber­ly Bap­tiste be­came Kim­ber­ly Bap­tiste Nor­griff.

While many brides look for­ward to a lav­ish cer­e­mo­ny, sur­round­ed by their friends and fam­i­ly, her mar­riage to Keishaun Nor­griff was com­plet­ed at the Red House in Port-of-Spain as the cou­ple thought it bet­ter to have a sim­ple wed­ding so that they could in­vest fur­ther in their bud­ding busi­ness­es.

How­ev­er, the Tabaquite-born civ­il en­gi­neer ex­plained that this em­pha­sis on fu­ture in­vest­ment has been a hall­mark of their re­la­tion­ship since it be­gan five years ago.

“Even from the be­gin­ning of our re­la­tion­ship, when he start­ed in­vest­ing in the re­la­tion­ship, I would be like, I rather we do this for our fu­ture in­stead of do­ing these things. So we didn’t have the typ­i­cal meet and court and wine and dine. We ac­tu­al­ly met on Tin­der dur­ing the pan­dem­ic,” Bap­tiste Nor­griff told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in a phone in­ter­view, the day be­fore her wed­ding.

She re­called that their first phys­i­cal date was a sim­ple sushi din­ner at her one-bed­room apart­ment af­ter pick­ing up her fu­ture hus­band from quar­an­tine.

“You couldn’t go to restau­rants back then, but that’s how we start­ed dat­ing. Very hum­ble, very sim­ple, and he didn’t have to spend a lot of mon­ey, be­cause of the cir­cum­stances at the time, and then when it was time for him to spend mon­ey, we were al­ready se­ri­ous. And, you know, we de­cid­ed that, hey, let’s in­vest in our fu­ture,” she said.

The two de­vel­oped shared goals in busi­ness since then, al­though Bap­tiste Nor­griff had al­ready start­ed her first busi­ness while prepar­ing to fur­nish her home. She re­alised, de­spite be­ing an en­gi­neer hold­ing a se­nior po­si­tion in a state agency, that she was still falling short in her at­tempts to achieve those dreams.

“I al­ways knew that I want­ed to have a busi­ness. I just didn’t know how to get the busi­ness. I was about to buy a house in 2020, and I want­ed my house to look beau­ti­ful, like a Pin­ter­est house. But even as an en­gi­neer with a man­age­ment role I still couldn’t fin­ish my house. I was still strug­gling. So I start­ed to look for so­lu­tions to have nice things for your homes that look very lux­u­ri­ous, but it’s al­so af­ford­able for the av­er­age per­son. And that is kind of start­ing my first busi­ness, Handy House­wife, just look­ing for an af­ford­able lux­u­ry that the reg­u­lar per­son could buy,’ she said, de­tail­ing the road to start­ing her first busi­ness, which pro­vid­ed af­ford­able yet lux­u­ri­ous home prod­ucts.

Her hus­band be­gan sup­port­ing her by in­vest­ing in the brand, but was ini­tial­ly aim­ing to em­u­late her by buy­ing a home of his own. How­ev­er, the cou­ple re­vised that ap­proach and in­vest­ed in an in­come-earn­ing prop­er­ty in­stead.

“The mon­ey that he had put aside for his home, he in­vest­ed in the busi­ness. And then I was well, you’re sup­posed to buy a house. Let’s not. Don’t buy a house. Let’s get our in­come prop­er­ty. So we were look­ing for apart­ment build­ings or things like­ly to gen­er­ate in­come. So that’s how we end­ed up buy­ing Coastal Oa­sis, be­cause it was a case of let’s make the sac­ri­fice and let’s plan for our fu­ture. So that’s just how our re­la­tion­ship adapt­ed. “

The suc­cess of Handy House­wife as well as her hus­band’s sup­port gave Bap­tiste Nor­griff the con­fi­dence to leave her job af­ter be­com­ing preg­nant and the cou­ple have not looked back.

Handy House­wife has evolved from a busi­ness op­er­at­ed out of Bap­tiste’s home in­to a phys­i­cal store and suc­cess­ful web­site op­er­a­tion.

In the past year, the cou­ple has ex­pand­ed their reach even fur­ther through the launch of a cloth­ing line: HONI la­bel.

“Af­ter a year to­geth­er I got preg­nant, and I told him I’m go­ing to leave my job when I make the ba­by. Said I want to be a stay-at-home mom and since then, I’ve been full-time in busi­ness. Short­ly af­ter we had the ba­by, we start­ed our sec­ond busi­ness. We bought a prop­er­ty in To­ba­go, and ful­ly ren­o­vat­ed it. Coastal Oa­sis is in To­ba­go, and we start­ed do­ing rentals like for the tourism in­dus­try,” she said. Coastal Oa­sis has al­so con­sis­tent­ly done good busi­ness for the cou­ple.

She said all of her busi­ness stayed in line with pro­vid­ing a lux­u­ri­ous feel at a price the av­er­age man could af­ford. That is why she came up with the idea for HONI la­bel. The cloth­ing line was an im­me­di­ate suc­cess, sell­ing out with­in 24 hours of its launch and sur­pass­ing the cou­ple’s rev­enue tar­gets in just six months of op­er­a­tions.

Bap­tiste Nor­griff at­trib­uted her mind­set of sac­ri­fice to her up­bring­ing and the suc­cess of her par­ents, who achieved a lot de­spite hum­ble be­gin­nings.

The new­ly mar­ried Bap­tiste Nor­griff ex­plained she got her eye for busi­ness from her fa­ther, who seized op­por­tu­ni­ties as a farmer and be­came suc­cess­ful.

His vi­sion car­ried on to her, and she has al­so found suc­cess with the cloth­ing line de­spite fac­ing chal­lenges along the way.

Bap­tiste Nor­griff said she had to take a step back from Handy House­wife to help push the cloth­ing line, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en her per­son­al in­volve­ment with the de­sign.

“It’s ac­tu­al­ly cre­at­ing my own brand. I am re­spon­si­ble for de­sign from sam­pling the clothes to mak­ing sure I choose the right fit. I have to do the ed­its, some­times, three, four times on a pants to make sure I get it right too,” she said.

But she ad­mit­ted the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion has cre­at­ed chal­lenges for the cou­ple.

“We re­cent­ly went to get bank ac­counts with Re­pub­lic Bank, and with the for­eign cur­ren­cy sit­u­a­tion, they would is­sue us US$500 (per cred­it card). So what we have to do is go in the bank and re­quest to do a wire trans­fer. And it is not al­ways guar­an­teed. Some­times I have to go back three to four times in the bank. I have to be play­ing hide and seek with my sup­pli­ers, and (tell them), I don’t have the US. So we’re pay­ing piece, piece, piece, you un­der­stand, and re­al­ly slow­ing down the busi­ness be­cause the busi­ness is grow­ing, but I don’t have the US to grow with the busi­ness,” said Bap­tiste Nor­griff.

For­tu­nate­ly for the cou­ple, their sup­pli­ers have shown a lev­el of un­der­stand­ing con­cern­ing the chal­lenges faced in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ei­ther way, the cou­ple is ea­ger to push for­ward to­geth­er, mak­ing sac­ri­fices now to fa­cil­i­tate in­vest­ments in the fu­ture.