Car­ol Quash

Shan­nice Crys­tal Brit­to be­lieves that health is wealth. So when she in­tro­duced her prod­uct, North Coast Moss to the mar­ket one year ago, it was with the in­ten­tion of giv­ing her cus­tomers a pre­mi­um, pur­pose-dri­ven seamoss brand that pro­motes a more healthy lifestyle.

“I have been in the health and well­ness space for over a decade, and dur­ing that time I de­vel­oped a deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the role that qual­i­ty herbal prod­ucts and ed­u­ca­tion play in sup­port­ing a health­i­er lifestyle. I know there are a lot of seamoss brands out there, but I was de­ter­mined to pro­duce some­thing that can tar­get spe­cif­ic health is­sues for over­all well­ness.”

Her prod­uct comes in gel form and can be con­sumed as is, or added to things like smooth­ies, and teas.

Brit­to told Busi­ness Guardian she took no­tice of how pop­u­lar seamoss prod­ucts were be­com­ing, as more peo­ple be­came aware of its ben­e­fits and min­er­al con­tents.

In T&T, seamoss has been tra­di­tion­al­ly boiled and made in­to a milk punch, but on a glob­al com­mer­cial scale, raw seamoss is har­vest­ed to ex­tract the car­rageenan – a nat­ur­al, jel­ly-like thick­en­ing agent used in sta­bil­is­ing dairy prod­ucts. It can now be found in a va­ri­ety of processed forms such as gels, pow­ders, cap­sules and gum­mies, caus­ing the surge in de­mand for seamoss-based prod­ucts to boom in­to a bil­lion-dol­lar well­ness in­dus­try.

The ma­rine al­gae is heav­i­ly mar­ket­ed on so­cial me­dia as a nu­tri­ent-dense su­per­food for im­mune sup­port, gut health, and glow­ing skin. And be­ing a lover of seamoss her­self, Brit­to took that op­por­tu­ni­ty to turn that love in­to a stream of in­come.

“At the mo­ment, I have two blends – reg­u­lar and triple berry blend.”

The Tacarigua natur­opath said her blends are not sweet, and she us­es go­ji, acai and el­der berries in the triple blend.

“That’s what we call the su­per im­mu­ni­ty blend.”

Her start-up in­vest­ment, she said, amount­ed to over $20,000, which went to­wards cre­at­ing her pro­duc­tion area, pur­chas­ing equip­ment such as a ster­il­i­sa­tion ma­chine and com­mer­cial blenders, la­belling and pack­ag­ing, and large scale sourc­ing of seamoss from lo­cal sup­pli­ers, as well as from Grena­da and St Lu­cia.

Ac­cord­ing to the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions, “The mas­sive de­mand (for seamoss) has great­ly el­e­vat­ed the Caribbean’s Blue Econ­o­my, with na­tions like St Lu­cia and Ja­maica ex­pand­ing their cul­ti­va­tion, har­vest­ing and ex­port ca­pac­i­ties to meet glob­al con­sump­tion de­mands.”

Based on her ex­ten­sive re­search, Brit­to said sea moss car­ries over 90 min­er­als that the body needs, among them io­dine, potas­si­um, cal­ci­um, iron and zinc.

“And be­sides the min­er­al con­tent, it is very good for your skin. I don’t want to make any med­ical claims, but seamoss has been used tra­di­tion­al­ly over the years to sup­port over­all well­ness and a lot of peo­ple in­cor­po­rate it in­to their rou­tine to sup­port things like im­mune health, di­ges­tion, en­er­gy lev­els and over­all nu­tri­tion.”

Her prod­ucts are not yet avail­able in stores, but that is one of her short-term goals, with plans to ex­pand her reach out­side of the is­lands.

“I would love to see the prod­ucts avail­able in well­ness spaces through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, across the Caribbean and even­tu­al­ly in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. I re­al­ly hope al­so to help show­case the qual­i­ty of our lo­cal sea moss by shar­ing it with a much wider au­di­ence.”

But for now, she fa­cil­i­tates pick up at Trinci­ty Mall and she of­fers na­tion­wide de­liv­er at a cost, lay­ing the ground­work to grow North Coast Moss in­to a house­hold name, known for qual­i­ty, trust, and even in­no­va­tion with the blends that she cre­ates.

“For now, I have two main blends that I’m fo­cussing on. But I do have plans to bring oth­er blends in the near fu­ture.”

For her, the name too, like the prod­uct, serves a pur­pose.

“The word ‘North’ rep­re­sents di­rec­tion, sta­bil­i­ty and strength. And it ba­si­cal­ly re­minds me to al­ways move for­ward with pur­pose while stay­ing ground­ed in my val­ues. And at the same time, the name al­so pays trib­ute to the beau­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Our north­ern coast­line has al­ways in­spired me, and it re­flects our con­nec­tion to na­ture, our Caribbean her­itage and our com­mit­ment to qual­i­ty.”