At the turn of the 21st cen­tu­ry, the cin­e­ma in­dus­try in T&T was in the dol­drums. The gold­en age of big-screen en­ter­tain­ment was gone, felled by the on­slaught of new tech­nolo­gies that brought movies right in­to your home. Au­di­ences had shrunk from its boom in the ’60s and ’70s, and all around, movie the­atres were clos­ing down.  

There were not, how­ev­er, many oth­er safe and en­joy­able fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment op­tions avail­able. 

In­to this sce­nario came an en­tre­pre­neur with a vi­sion to de­vel­op an en­ter­tain­ment com­plex of­fer­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence pa­trons could on­ly have had when trav­el­ling abroad. 

Such was the be­gin­ning of Movi­eTowne in Trinidad, and through this ven­ture, Derek Chin be­came a house­hold name.

Born in George­town, Guyana, Derek Alexan­der Chin sub­se­quent­ly mi­grat­ed to Trinidad.

He had big dreams from an ear­ly age: he knew that he want­ed to be his own boss, bring­ing first world ideas to his adopt­ed home coun­try.  

Dri­ven by a mix of pa­tri­o­tism and a be­lief in the pow­er of mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion, he used his in­nate re­silience and dri­ve to turn his vi­sions in­to re­al­i­ties.

From his hum­ble be­gin­nings, he em­barked up­on a jour­ney of se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

Tap­ping in­to the new forms of en­ter­tain­ment in the 1990s, he start­ed with four ar­cade ma­chines at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The ven­ture was high­ly suc­cess­ful, and with­in a short space of time, he was able to cap­i­talise, and launched his ar­cade busi­ness with Games World ar­cades across Trinidad.

This ven­ture would lead him down the path to in­tro­duc­ing on­line Lot­to games to the coun­try. He was re­spon­si­ble for the in­tro­duc­tion of Play Whe and Lot­to to Trinidad and To­ba­go in 1994 un­der GTech cor­po­ra­tion.

These on­line games have be­come part of the na­tion­al land­scape.

It was af­ter this that he set his sights on re­al­is­ing his life-long dream of in­tro­duc­ing a cine­plex in­to the coun­try.

Many peo­ple had reser­va­tions about the po­ten­tial long-term suc­cess of Movi­eTowne, but Chin did not let this im­pede his plans.

Where most busi­ness­men would be dis­il­lu­sioned by op­po­si­tion, Derek was dri­ven to per­se­vere. Movi­eTowne has trans­formed the lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment land­scape and re­ju­ve­nat­ed cin­e­ma-go­ing for many—even peo­ple who had not vis­it­ed a cin­e­ma in T&T for 20-plus years.

The in­dus­try has be­come a sta­ple and is still grow­ing.

Fol­low­ing the flag­ship’s suc­cess, Movi­eTowne ex­pand­ed its lo­ca­tions to Ch­agua­nas, To­ba­go and, most re­cent­ly, San Fer­nan­do.

Chin is con­stant­ly evolv­ing his skills sets and em­bark­ing on new and ex­cit­ing projects.

For ex­am­ple, when he was faced with the need for world-class din­ing in Movi­eTowne, he be­came a restau­ra­teur, in­tro­duc­ing new in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chis­es to the Caribbean that are now some of the most suc­cess­ful in the coun­try. But he sounds a note of cau­tion.

True en­tre­pre­neur­ship is not nor­mal­ly en­cour­aged in T&T, says Chin, and the cul­ture of our so­ci­ety la­bels the ad­ven­tur­ous few as dream­ers. This cre­ates a very neg­a­tive en­vi­ron­ment.

In his pur­suits, he has re­ceived count­less op­po­si­tions—es­pe­cial­ly fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

He says: “Peo­ple are al­ways look­ing for rea­sons to stop your project, and you are left with a feel­ing of lone­li­ness like it’s ‘You vs the World’”.

This how­ev­er does not de­ter him from achiev­ing his goals. Al­though he may ques­tion him­self at times, in the end he as­sess­es the risks in­volved and re­lies on his in­stincts to guide him.

Chin is very aware that to whom much is giv­en much is ex­pect­ed.

Ful­fill­ing a strong pa­tri­ot­ic in­stinct, he be­lieves in “giv­ing back” and is a gen­er­ous bene­fac­tor to many caus­es.  For the past 15 years Movi­eTowne has been host­ing a Christ­mas Char­i­ty Kids Event for up to 1,500 chil­dren from chil­dren’s homes and at-risk com­mu­ni­ties. 

The com­pa­ny has al­so sup­port­ed Vi­tas House Can­cer Hos­pice, the Fin­bar Ryan Geri­atric Home, La­dy Ho­choy Home and pro­vides on­go­ing sup­port to Unit­ed Way. 

In 2010, fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake, Movie Towne raised $70,000 for the Haiti Earth­quake Re­lief and, more re­cent­ly, do­nat­ed re­lief funds on be­half of Movi­eTowne and its pa­trons for re­cov­ery ef­forts in Caribbean coun­tries, af­ter the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­canes Ir­ma and Maria, as well as those af­fect­ed by the re­cent flood­ing that af­fect­ed so many of the cit­i­zens of T&T.

Chin found­ed the Sec­ondary Schools Film Fes­ti­val Com­pe­ti­tion which ran from 2005 to 2010, and cre­at­ed ex­cit­ing new ca­reer av­enues youths by de­vel­op­ing the art of film mak­ing.

Movi­eTowne has be­come a pop­u­lar fund-rais­ing event lo­ca­tion for non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions, where many Char­i­ty Movie Pre­mieres are host­ed. These ef­forts raise over one mil­lion dol­lars an­nu­al­ly to as­sist wor­thy caus­es.

Each year, there are give­aways such as VIP year-round pass­es to top per­form­ers in the SEA Ex­am­i­na­tions, and a gift of ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the na­tion at the an­nu­al Na­tion­al Movie Day. In ad­di­tion to char­i­ties, Chin is hap­py to spon­sor prizes year-round to hun­dreds of lo­cal busi­ness and char­i­ta­ble en­deav­ours. He is pas­sion­ate about hors­es and horse rac­ing, and has do­nat­ed his re­tired hors­es as well as com­mit­ted reg­u­lar fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to a lo­cal char­i­ty for autis­tic and spe­cial needs chil­dren called “Hors­es Help­ing Hu­mans.”

In his beloved sport of horse rac­ing, Chin is now very much in­volved in Cana­da at the world-fa­mous Wood­bine Race Track where he has been the lead­ing West In­di­an/Caribbean own­er for the last three years.

He is one of the few—per­haps on­ly—Caribbean na­tion­als to be a mem­ber of the pres­ti­gious Cana­di­an Jock­ey Club.

The over 1,600 staff mem­bers are not for­got­ten.

Em­ploy­ees can ben­e­fit from com­pet­i­tive salaries, lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al train­ing and ad­van­tages such as free month­ly movie tick­ets and dis­counts on meals, while high­er man­age­ment is af­ford­ed group trips to movie con­ven­tions in Las Ve­gas.

These in­cen­tives have re­sult­ed in an over 50 per cent re­ten­tion rate and em­ploy­ees who have grown with the com­pa­ny.

The next project for Chin is Movi­eTowne Guyana, which he felt ho­n­oured to do for the peo­ple of Guyana giv­en his own roots and ties to the coun­try.

The $300 mil­lion in­vest­ment is ex­pect­ed to rev­o­lu­tionise the city of George­town and de­liv­er a new world of en­ter­tain­ment, shop­ping and din­ing in that coun­try.

Apart from this, Chin is look­ing for­ward to an­oth­er ven­ture in the com­ing years—Streets of the World.

Chin has proven to be a pi­o­neer of the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try with in­no­va­tions and ideas which have en­hanced T&T’s busi­ness land­scape.

To­day, the Dachin Group of Com­pa­nies en­com­pass­es Movi­eTowne’s mul­ti­ple cine­plex lo­ca­tions, com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ments, three pre­mier restau­rant fran­chis­es, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, gam­ing and dig­i­tal me­dia com­pa­nies. 

Some may say he has scaled the moun­tain of suc­cess but he knows it is not just his own do­ing.

He is grate­ful to his wife Chris­tine and chil­dren Ryan, Ste­fan and Alex­is, who have stood by him through­out.

But Derek Chin knows there are still oth­er moun­tains to scale.

Al­though he has set the bar high for oth­ers to fol­low, he con­tin­ues to dream big and be­lieves there is no peak too tall for him to climb in or­der to achieve his vi­sion.