Car­ni­val’s com­mer­cial en­gine is fac­ing a struc­tur­al reck­on­ing.  
Af­ter 77 years in op­er­a­tion, Sama­roo’s is open­ly ques­tion­ing whether it can con­tin­ue be­yond 2027 un­less there is de­ci­sive pol­i­cy in­ter­ven­tion to re­bal­ance what its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Steve Sama­roo, de­scribes as a lop­sided mar­ket­place tilt­ed to­wards im­port­ed, ready-made cos­tumes.
“This was our worst year in the busi­ness be­cause our sales de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly for dif­fer­ent rea­sons,” Sama­roo said, list­ing the im­por­ta­tion of fin­ished cos­tumes from Chi­na, for­eign ex­change con­straints, and ris­ing clear­ance costs among the pri­ma­ry pres­sures.
Sama­roo’s abil­i­ty to grow since COVID-19 has been sti­fled, by the larg­er, more re­source­ful bands im­port­ing com­plet­ed cos­tumes rather than sourc­ing fab­rics, wire, trims, and ac­ces­sories lo­cal­ly. That mod­el by­pass­es do­mes­tic sup­pli­ers and com­press­es mar­gins across the tra­di­tion­al val­ue chain.
“The cos­tume prices make it very chal­leng­ing and raise the ques­tion of whether we should con­tin­ue as a sup­pli­er,” he said. “If you’re pro­vid­ing a cos­tume ready-made from Chi­na, you don’t need the lo­cal labour and raw ma­te­ri­als in­put in­to a cos­tume here.”
The com­pa­ny once op­er­at­ed five lo­ca­tions, it is now down to two—its main branch at El So­cor­ro and a San Fer­nan­do out­let—af­ter clos­ing three since the pan­dem­ic.
He main­tained that he is ful­ly aware of the land­ed prices paid for those im­port­ed cos­tumes and be­lieves the ex­ist­ing 20 per cent du­ty is in­suf­fi­cient. “The re­sult­ing 20 per cent du­ty is min­i­mal and should be at least 200 per cent,” he said, propos­ing a slid­ing scale tied to lo­cal con­tent. “So the ques­tion is what per­cent­age of lo­cal in­put should be in the cos­tumes? No lo­cal in­put, then 500 per cent du­ty.”
For Sama­roo, the is­sue is not on­ly com­mer­cial but cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic. He frames Car­ni­val as an in­te­grat­ed ecosys­tem once pow­ered by de­sign­ers, crafts­men, wire ben­ders, dec­o­ra­tors, and seam­stress­es who col­lec­tive­ly gen­er­at­ed em­ploy­ment and ex­port­ed cre­ativ­i­ty. He points to lega­cy bands—such as Poi­son, Bar­barosa, Harts, Tri­ni Rev­ellers, Lega­cy/Leg­ends, D Mi­das, Mas­querde—and band­lead­ers like Raoul Garib, Wayne Berke­ley, Pe­ter Min­shall, Bri­an Mac Far­lane, Pe­ter Samuel, Neville Hinds, Owen Hinds, Jagges­sars, Kallicha­rans,  Zain­ool Mo­hammed as ar­chi­tects who helped put T&T on the world stage.
“We saw a lot of cre­ativ­i­ty, which we rarely see now in the larg­er bands but on­ly in the Kings and Queens, in­di­vid­u­als, and the tra­di­tion­al mas,” he said.

Tar­iffs, lo­cal con­tent and pol­i­cy di­rec­tion

Sama­roo is call­ing for an im­me­di­ate con­sul­ta­tion among sup­pli­ers, band lead­ers, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) and the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism to de­ter­mine the fu­ture ar­chi­tec­ture of the in­dus­try. In his view, Car­ni­val re­quires new con­di­tions to stim­u­late do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion be­fore the sup­ply base col­laps­es.

“Where is our Gov­ern­ment in all this?” he asked. “They need to re­vis­it Car­ni­val and start im­ple­ment­ing new con­di­tions to com­pete and stim­u­late the lo­cal in­dus­try be­fore we lose it all and just make Car­ni­val one big par­ty as it has be­come now.”

Among his pro­pos­als are high­er du­ties on ful­ly as­sem­bled im­port­ed cos­tumes, du­ty-free treat­ment for bona fide Car­ni­val ma­te­ri­als and a for­mal lo­cal con­tent frame­work that dif­fer­en­ti­ates tar­iffs based on the per­cent­age of do­mes­tic in­put. If a cos­tume is large­ly con­struct­ed abroad with neg­li­gi­ble lo­cal val­ue added, he be­lieves the du­ty should be puni­tive. If it is sub­stan­tial­ly pro­duced lo­cal­ly, it should be el­i­gi­ble for re­lief.
He ar­gued that with­out such in­ter­ven­tion, Sama­roo’s may have to con­sid­er clos­ing its doors in 2027. The com­pa­ny is al­ready eval­u­at­ing con­sol­i­da­tion to re­duce over­heads. Be­tween 60 and 75 jobs could be at risk if fur­ther down­siz­ing oc­curs.

“The Gov­ern­ment has not in­ter­vened to as­sist our trade and in­vest­ment in the Car­ni­val busi­ness,” he said. “The stake­hold­ers need im­me­di­ate con­sul­ta­tion go­ing for­ward.”

Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian con­tact­ed TTC­BA pres­i­dent, Mark Ayen, for com­ment on the con­cerns raised by Sama­roo. Ayen con­firmed that he had reached out to Sama­roo and in­di­cat­ed that the is­sues high­light­ed are rel­e­vant to the wider Car­ni­val ecosys­tem. He stressed that Car­ni­val func­tions as an in­te­grat­ed in­dus­try, where de­sign­ers, sup­pli­ers, bands, crafts­men and mas­quer­aders are in­ter­de­pen­dent, and that col­lab­o­ra­tion, not frag­men­ta­tion, is es­sen­tial for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Ayen, stressed he is will­ing to meet with Sama­roo along with oth­er stake­hold­ers to ex­am­ine the mat­ter from both a de­mand and sup­ply per­spec­tive.

For­eign ex­change and de­clin­ing sales

Be­yond im­ports, Sama­roo high­lights sys­temic fi­nan­cial con­straints. He con­tends that banks have lacked eq­ui­table for­eign ex­change prac­tices, pri­ori­tis­ing fund­ing for larg­er cus­tomers af­ter be­ing ad­vised to give pref­er­ence to food im­porters and the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. Medi­um and small busi­ness­es, he said, were left with lim­it­ed ac­cess to for­eign ex­change re­quired to source raw ma­te­ri­als.
“The banks lacked eq­ui­table for­eign ex­change prac­tices, pri­ori­tis­ing fund­ing for its larg­er cus­tomers,” he said, adding that small­er op­er­a­tors had lit­tle op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow.
Cus­toms process­es and 100 per cent ex­am­i­na­tions have al­so de­layed the re­lease of ship­ments, in­creas­ing stor­age and clear­ance costs. Those ex­pens­es, com­bined with raw ma­te­r­i­al price move­ments, have pushed re­tail prices up by be­tween 10 and 20 per cent in some in­stances.
At the re­tail end, he ob­serves a struc­tur­al shift in de­mand. “I am told that the mas­quer­aders no longer want ex­ces­sive cos­tum­ing and will just wear a biki­ni with a small back­pack, elim­i­nat­ing stan­dards,” he said. The re­sult, in his as­sess­ment, is vi­su­al ho­mogeni­sa­tion.

“At the end of the day, all the larg­er bands re­al­ly look the same. The cre­ativ­i­ty and the fab­ric of Car­ni­val rarely ex­ist any­more.”

He traced Car­ni­val’s ori­gins to East Port of Spain, root­ed in AfricanE­man­ci­pa­tion tra­di­tions, and be­lieves the fes­ti­val has drift­ed from that foun­da­tion. “The ori­gins of Car­ni­val were in the Port of Spain East area, dom­i­nat­ed by our African her­itage, and we have lost touch with why T&T has a Car­ni­val in the first place,” he said.

Draw­ing a com­par­i­son with Brazil’s sam­ba schools, he not­ed that Brazil­ian Car­ni­val still em­pha­sis­es elab­o­rate cos­tum­ing and struc­tured pre­sen­ta­tions.

Lo­cal­ly, he ar­gued, frag­men­ta­tion has di­lut­ed in­ter­est. “We now have two Car­ni­vals in Port of Spain in­stead of one Car­ni­val for the ben­e­fit of our peo­ple. This di­vi­sion has cre­at­ed a lack of in­ter­est in peo­ple go­ing to the Big Yard to watch our mas.”

Re­call­ing his child­hood an­tic­i­pa­tion of Mon­day and Tues­day at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah(QPS), he added: “As a boy, I was so ex­cit­ed to go on Mon­day and Tues­day to the QPS. Now I just go most­ly to the Kings and Queens shows.”

He main­tained that the down­ward tra­jec­to­ry in sales is not cycli­cal but struc­tur­al, tied to im­port sub­sti­tu­tion, fi­nanc­ing gaps and evolv­ing con­sumer pref­er­ences.

Adap­ta­tion over pro­tec­tion

Jim­my Aboud Tex­tile Cen­tre di­rec­tor Gre­go­ry Aboud ac­cepts that de­sign for­mu­la­tions and mas­quer­ad­er pref­er­ences have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly, but he re­jects tar­iff es­ca­la­tion as the so­lu­tion.

“I dis­agree with want­i­ng to make an­oth­er man’s prod­uct more ex­pen­sive so that I can find an eas­i­er way to sell my prod­uct,” Aboud said. “The worst thing that we could do is to tam­per with the mas­quer­ad­er at this point.”

He viewed Chi­nese pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty as an op­er­a­tional ad­van­tage rather than a threat. “No­body pro­duces as quick­ly, as ef­fi­cient­ly and as su­perbly as the Chi­nese do, and we have to use that as a re­source to help build our in­dus­try of Car­ni­val in T&T.”

Aboud not­ed that many im­port­ed pieces are foun­da­tion struc­tures that re­ceive lo­cal em­bell­ish­ment, and that sup­pli­ers must repo­si­tion rather than lob­by for pro­tec­tion. His com­pa­ny is fo­cus­ing on cost-ef­fec­tive, user-friend­ly fab­rics and ac­ces­so­ry ma­te­ri­als that can be glued, cut with­out fray­ing, and as­sem­bled with less labour in­ten­si­ty. Aboud said his com­pa­ny is al­so while iden­ti­fy­ing growth in Chil­dren’s Car­ni­val and ac­ces­so­ry lines.
“We have to adapt, and we have to re­for­mu­late what we of­fer to make our­selves rel­e­vant,” he said.

He al­so cau­tioned against bur­den­ing band­lead­ers, whom he de­scribes as one of the few Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers not de­pen­dent on pub­lic sub­ven­tions. In his as­sess­ment, im­pos­ing heavy du­ties would un­fair­ly pe­nalise the seg­ment that pays its own way and at­tracts in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“The mas­quer­ad­er is the sin­gle most im­por­tant el­e­ment. We should not in­ter­fere with the mas­quer­ad­er at this time,” he said.

The con­trast be­tween Sama­roo and Aboud un­der­scores a broad­er na­tion­al pol­i­cy cross­roads, whether to ac­tive­ly safe­guard and re­struc­ture the do­mes­tic Car­ni­val pro­duc­tion ecosys­tem through stronger tar­iff regimes and en­force­able lo­cal-con­tent re­quire­ments, or to ac­knowl­edge the per­ma­nence of glob­alised sup­ply chains and com­pel lo­cal op­er­a­tors to repo­si­tion them­selves with­in that re­al­i­ty. For Sama­roo's, how­ev­er, this is not an ab­stract de­bate.