The Grand Riv­ierie Room of the Court­yard Mar­riott was trans­formed in­to a vir­tu­al su­per­mar­ket, ad­ja­cent to a beach scene com­plete with 'limers' in beach wear along with a full ser­vice kitchen which served as the stage and podi­um at the head of the room. The scene was set for the re­launch of the Rub­ber­maid brand last week. The team from lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor, AS Bry­den & Sons and the re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Newell Rub­ber­maid host­ed their top sales cus­tomers to an in­trigu­ing look at the new range of prod­ucts. "We be­lieve there is an in­cred­i­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty for growth in this mar­ket. The con­sumers here are look­ing for a brand that of­fers qual­i­ty and longevi­ty and those are just a cou­ple of the core val­ues of this brand", ex­plained Juan Luis Sal­vador, the Se­nior Brand Man­ag­er for Rub­ber­maid Con­sumer prod­ucts - Latin Amer­i­ca.

The evening opened with a very per­son­al en­dorse­ment from the MC Nat­acha Jones, who re­cit­ed how im­pressed she was with the pas­sion of the team be­hind the brand as she re­count­ed her first meet­ing with the Newell Rub­ber­maid spokesper­son who was quite in­tent on en­sur­ing her daugh­ter had the most suit­able Rub­ber­maid ac­cou­trement for her lunch kit. Jones spoke from the "vir­tu­al kitchen" stage which was cre­at­ed in the room and hint­ed that there would be a sur­prise in store from the kitchen lat­er in the evening. An­drew Mil­lar, di­rec­tor of Hard­ware and House ware Di­vi­sion of AS Bry­den & Sons Trinidad Lim­it­ed, then took the floor and not­ed that at this time, New Year, while many of us be­gin with res­o­lu­tions to re-or­gan­ise our lives – Rub­ber­maid is a per­fect part­ner. While the range of prod­ucts is ex­haus­tive, the "su­per­mar­ket" shelves stocked for the evening fea­tured the new range of food stor­age prod­ucts such as the Easy Find Lid or­ga­ni­za­tion sys­tem which in­cludes Pre­mier, Glass, Pro­duce Saver and Lock-Its as well as the much loved "car­ni­val and beach lime" cool­ers. Some of the ben­e­fits of the new prod­ucts in­clud­ed the stain re­sis­tant na­ture of the Pre­mier range – made with Tri­tan plas­tic that re­pels stains, and the Prod­uct Saver quot­ed as keep­ing veg­eta­bles fresh up to 33% longer than oth­er brands. "It's the fresh Vent fea­ture that al­lows pro­duce to breathe while the crisp tray sep­a­rates pro­duce from mois­ture help­ing it to stay fresh and crisp," ex­plained Cristi­na Var­gas, As­so­ciate Chan­nel Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er.

Per­haps the most en­ter­tain­ing in­gre­di­ent of the evening was the pres­ence of Chef Bernard Long. Well known for de­light­ing Tri­ni palates for the last 15 years, Chef Long sur­prised the guests with his use of the range of Rub­ber­maid con­tain­ers to not on­ly con­tain more than ex­pect­ed large sums of his de­li­cious cre­ations in what seemed to be tiny con­tain­ers, but he stretched the imag­i­na­tion and showed the re­al ver­sa­til­i­ty of the range by stor­ing mouth wa­ter­ing creme brul&ea­cute;e dessert right next to pun­gent fish sauces with­out any odor car­ry over. "I use these prod­ucts in my kitchen and on my co­coa and cof­fee plan­ta­tion. The air tight fea­ture is ex­cep­tion­al for stor­ing the cof­fee that I farm in Bras­so Seco." he ex­plained. While the 'limers' on the vir­tu­al beach scene en­joyed ice cold bev­er­ages, the guests feast­ed on a wide range of ap­pe­tiz­ers in­clud­ing grilled lamb chops, egg­plant caviar and smoked salmon toast points. It was cer­tain­ly a nov­el way of pre­sent­ing the re­launched range of house ware prod­ucts. To top it all off, one lucky cus­tomer won the Chef Long catered "pic­nic lunch for four" door prize which will of course be de­liv­ered in the new range of Rub­ber­maid food stor­age con­tain­ers. The new prod­uct range is ex­pect­ed in lo­cal su­per­mar­kets and va­ri­ety stores lat­er this month and judg­ing by the num­ber of or­ders re­ceived that evening, the range will be eas­i­ly avail­able Na­tion­wide.