Car­ol Quash

As forex lim­i­ta­tions con­tin­ue to plague on­line shop­pers, one en­tre­pre­neur whose prod­ucts and ser­vices is mak­ing a glob­al reach, is giv­ing her T&T cus­tomers the op­tion of pay­ing for their pur­chas­es from her web­site in lo­cal cur­ren­cy.

Nire­na Nobbee is the own­er of the pre­mi­um dog bou­tique, Wuff Box, and the on­line con­sul­tan­cy clin­ic, Wuff’s Ca­nine Health Clin­ic.

The bou­tique of­fers gift and Bark­Day box­es con­tain­ing al­ler­gen-free treats, toys, cloth­ing and ac­ces­sories, while the clin­ic of­fers con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices from a health and nu­tri­tion­al per­spec­tive.

“I had opened the bou­tique in Trinidad in 2019, then I ex­pand­ed to Toron­to and then Ja­maica … I opened the clin­ic on Ju­ly 11 in Toron­to, and what I’m plan­ning to do by Sep­tem­ber is to open it up in Trinidad, giv­ing clients the op­tion to utilise TT$ in­stead of try­ing to ac­cess forex via their cred­it card,” Nobbee told Busi­ness Guardian.

She said the T&T web­site will al­low cus­tomers to pay in TT dol­lars, do cash on de­liv­ery or do on­line bank trans­fers.

Nobbee was born in Cana­da, but both her par­ents are from T&T. She said when she de­cid­ed to get in­to busi­ness, her grand­fa­ther, the late Ha­ji Ya­coob Ali, men­tored her.

Ali was the longest serv­ing AS­JA pres­i­dent gen­er­al, an at­tor­ney and a phar­ma­cist.

“I’m just fol­low­ing in his foot­steps as the el­dest grand­daugh­ter, be­ing a lawyer, and I just fin­ished a BSc in health sci­ences to go in­to clin­i­cal re­search, which I’m pig­gy­back­ing off for the ca­nine nu­tri­tion clin­ic.”

Nobbee said one year af­ter she opened the on­line bou­tique, she opened the phys­i­cal store in south Trinidad, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“I built this store up dur­ing Covid. I was stuck in Trinidad, so I said ‘Let me just have this store opened.’ I had no idea how to run a busi­ness but my grand­fa­ther guid­ed me. I was my own boss and em­ploy­ee for the first three years. Then I opened in Toron­to in 2023, then I ex­pand­ed to Ja­maica in 2025.”

This ven­ture af­ford­ed her the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be make it to the top five of the in­ter­na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur of Im­pact—an an­nu­al on­line com­pe­ti­tion and na­tion­al fundrais­ing cam­paign host­ed by Colos­sal, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with En­tre­pre­neur Mag­a­zine and busi­ness mogul Day­mond John.

She said she has no re­grets of mak­ing that ini­tial in­vest­ment of an es­ti­mat­ed CAN$10,000.

“I utilised the fact that once the bor­ders were shut, every­thing went on sale on­line. I had enough stock to last for about two years.”

She said busi­ness es­pe­cial­ly picked up when she start­ed do­ing the month­ly themed box­es.

“For ex­am­ple, Jan­u­ary would be New Year’s so I start­ed get­ting these cham­pagne bot­tle squeak­er toys. In Feb­ru­ary did Valen­tine’s Day box­es, April would be East­er, and then I start­ed do­ing a sum­mer theme with flamin­gos, uni­corns pineap­ples, palm trees; things that would tie in­to Caribbean. I did Hal­loween for Oc­to­ber, No­vem­ber would be Thanks­giv­ing then Christ­mas in De­cem­ber.”

And dur­ing the World Cup, her foot­ball-themed box­es quick­ly sold out.

She said she did her mas­ter’s in med­ical law be­cause she was in­ter­est­ed in clin­i­cal re­search.

“I al­ways give my­self a time­line. So I’m 35 now, so prob­a­bly by 38 I plan to leave cor­po­rate law and want to prac­tise med­ical law. But in the midst of all of that I still want­ed to do some­thing on the side.”

She sad­ly re­called an un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent with her dogs, which turned out to be the in­spi­ra­tion for the ca­nine clin­ic.

“I was al­ready do­ing my de­gree in health sci­ences and I al­ways had in­ter­est in ca­nine nu­tri­tion … I did the in­te­gra­tive ca­nine natur­opa­thy cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and then an­i­mal nu­tri­tion as well. I’m al­so ac­cred­it­ed with in­ter­na­tion­al prac­ti­tion­ers of holis­tic med­i­cine in the UK.”

So when her beloved dogs went through their trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ences, she used her knowl­edge to help nurse them back to health.

“The rea­son be­hind the clin­ic now is be­cause of the dogs, be­cause of my love for dogs and be­cause I want­ed to car­ry on the lega­cy of hav­ing Wuff as a name.”

For now, the clin­ic re­mains vir­tu­al, but she is hope­ful that by next year she will be open­ing the doors to a phys­i­cal clin­ic.

“I start­ed pro­mot­ing the clin­ic in Feb­ru­ary so I had a wait list. The first client that I had was from the Philip­pines. She reached out to me prob­a­bly three months ago and I asked her to give me some time be­cause it was a more se­vere case where the dog had oral can­cer, and I was just fin­ish­ing up my cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. I didn’t want to be that type of per­son where I do not have the ac­tu­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to back up what I was say­ing.”

The clin­ic, she em­pha­sised, is not a vet­eri­nary clin­ic, but of­fers con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices af­ter a vet vis­it.

“You come to me with all your di­ag­no­sis, your scans, your blood work, every­thing that you have, and then we can work from there. If you don’t want to give your dog vet­eri­nary-pre­scribed med­ica­tions, no prob­lem, we will work from a nu­tri­tion­al per­spec­tive.

“The en­tire con­cept of Wuff’s Ca­nine Health Clin­ic is that it com­ple­ments vet­eri­nary care.”