Car­ol Quash

They’ve brought you events such as the fan­cy Fete Gala, Boozy Boat, Sun­Sips, Cin­co and JA­VA J’Ou­vert, on the lo­cal scene, and the Tidal Wave boat cruise at Crop Over in Bar­ba­dos. Now, the di­rec­tors of Life Events (Live in Free­dom Every­day) are mak­ing plans to ex­tend the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al reach to make it one of the en­ter­tain­ment pow­er­hous­es in the Caribbean.

Co-founder and di­rec­tor Miguel Ed­wards told Busi­ness Guardian the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly lay­ing the ground­work to host Tidal Wave in Grena­da dur­ing Spice­mas fes­tiv­i­ties in Au­gust this year, at a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$15,000.

Life Events was es­tab­lished in 2017, and Ed­wards de­scribed it as a com­pa­ny steeped in lo­cal cul­ture, and com­mit­ted to giv­ing pa­trons a mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ence at every event.

“We have eight events for the year —sev­en lo­cal and one re­gion­al. With each ex­pe­ri­ence, we try to in­clude some part of Trinidad and To­ba­go en­ter­tain­ment and Car­ni­val cul­ture with­in the event space,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

Its five di­rec­tors—Ed­wards, co-founder Kristoff Headley, Ak­il Samuel, Akeem Mar­shall and Shaquille Hug­gins—and 30 com­mit­tee mem­bers are trained in var­i­ous ar­eas of events plan­ning and man­age­ment, pro­mo­tions and mar­ket­ing, lo­gis­tics, fi­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion. Ed­wards said over the past eight years, the com­pa­ny has built a name for it­self and its self-suf­fi­cien­cy.

“In the be­gin­ning, we (the di­rec­tors) put in the cap­i­tal and split ex­pens­es to make sure things ran as flu­id­ly as pos­si­ble. And that’s one of the things that we take pride in; that we were able to fi­nance the busi­ness our­selves.

“We try to keep the own­er­ship with­in our five di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny, so we don’t seek out­side in­vestors. Life Events runs it­self.”

He said the con­cept for the com­pa­ny mor­phed from events he used to host when he had just grad­u­at­ed from St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege in Diego Mar­tin.

“Headley and I had been around the en­ter­tain­ment space for some years be­fore, back when I used to do events like Dut­ty San­ta,” a par­ty Ed­wards host­ed around Christ­mas that brought in some mon­ey and was a fun vibe.

“Headley and I were al­ways close friends, and around 2016, 2017, he ap­proached me to start do­ing our own brand.

They reg­is­tered the com­pa­ny, got all nec­es­sary le­gal and fi­nan­cial ap­provals and be­gan patent­ing the brands they ex­e­cut­ed.

“We start­ed plan­ning our first event, which was a boat ride, Wavy. And that’s where it all start­ed.

“Each event is like a prod­uct of Life Events: every­thing we plan and ex­e­cute has its own brand, with its own lo­go.”

He said so far, Life Events has five year­ly part­ners who pro­vide spon­sor­ship for it events: An­gos­tu­ra, Pep­si, Blue Wa­ter, Stag and TT Ride Share.

“Among those five brands par­tic­i­pate in some way in every one of our events.”

An­gos­tu­ra, for ex­am­ple, was es­pe­cial­ly es­sen­tial in help­ing to make the Jan­u­ary 31 Fete Gala an all-in­clu­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, giv­en the re­cent rise in the cost of al­co­hol.

“Even af­ter the last bud­get, they (An­gos­tu­ra) re­mained com­mit­ted to the agree­ment they had with us.”

Ed­wards said al­though the events plan­ning and man­age­ment mar­ket is be­com­ing quite sat­u­rat­ed in T&T, one ad­van­tage Life Events has is that its mem­bers have a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try and un­der­stand how to nav­i­gate the space.

“When peo­ple come to our Life Events, they have fun, they’re safe, and we re­al­ly do cater to make sure most of their needs are met, even some of the needs that pa­trons don’t know they would want,” such as the Heel Check fea­ture at Fete Gala, where fe­male pa­trons whose feet were hurt­ing dur­ing the fete, were able to leave their high-heeled shoes at a booth, par­ty in com­fort, and pick them up lat­er.

“Our events are based on cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, so we make sure the pa­trons are com­fort­able and have a good time.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ed­wards be­lieves be­cause the events are spread out through­out the year, and they vary in types, pa­trons are giv­en more lim­ing op­tions.

“So they al­ways have some­thing new, an­oth­er ex­pe­ri­ence to look for­ward to through­out the year, and not just with­in the Car­ni­val space.”

But, he said, be­cause Car­ni­val is part of the heart­beat of Life Events, its mem­bers are for­tu­nate enough to have easy ac­cess to cos­tumes in a sec­tion of the band, Spir­it Mas.

“When the band was formed three years ago, we were of­fered a sec­tion with a lim­it­ed num­ber of cos­tumes for the Life Events crowd, and the rest was sold to the gen­er­al pub­lic.”

This year, Ed­wards and his team will pa­rade the streets in the sec­tion Zuri, de­signed by Rhion Ro­many.

“We’re re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to hav­ing some fun be­tween all the hard work,” Ed­wards said.