The ris­ing de­mand for home im­prove­ment and self-care has dri­ven US man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny Kohler Co to bet big on T&T and the Caribbean mar­ket.

Last month, Kohler, a glob­al leader in the de­sign and man­u­fac­ture of kitchen and bath prod­ucts, opened the Kohler Pre­mier Show­room by The Bath Gallery in El So­cor­ro.

The com­pa­ny said the new 206-square-me­ter space was part of a strat­e­gy to strength­en the brand’s pres­ence in the Caribbean.

Kohler cur­rent­ly has sev­er­al show­rooms through­out the South Amer­i­can re­gion. In the Caribbean, the com­pa­ny has show­rooms in Puer­to Ri­co and St Maarten. In ad­di­tion to the T&T show­room, it re­cent­ly opened a show­room in Ja­maica with fu­ture plans for ex­pand­ing to Guyana.

The show­room was opened via a strate­gic part­ner­ship be­tween Kohler and lo­cal com­pa­ny CW In­te­ri­ors, which is well known in the lo­cal in­te­ri­or fin­ish­es mar­ket.

As part of the part­ner­ship, CW In­te­ri­ors has been grant­ed a dis­trib­u­tor­ship to rep­re­sent the Kohler brand in the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket. The dis­trib­u­tor­ship does not come with a cost, the com­pa­ny said. CW owns the build­ing in which the show­room is housed.

“This part­ner­ship rep­re­sents a strate­gic al­liance that brings to­geth­er the strength of a glob­al brand with a deep lega­cy in de­sign and in­no­va­tion, and the lo­cal knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence and mar­ket un­der­stand­ing that dis­tin­guish CW In­te­ri­ors,” said Rober­to Ri­olo­bos, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Kohler Latin Amer­i­ca in a re­lease an­nounc­ing the show­room.

“To­geth­er, we aim to cre­ate a space that not on­ly show­cas­es prod­ucts, but al­so in­spires cus­tomers to imag­ine and re­alise spaces that re­flect their lifestyle and as­pi­ra­tions,” said Ri­olo­bos.

Kohler has not­ed a shift in glob­al lifestyle trends. Since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, there has been in­creased em­pha­sis on home im­prove­ment. This has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by in­creased con­cerns about crime as well as the in­creased cost of liv­ing, which has led to more peo­ple spend­ing time at home.

Na­tal­ie Galt, who worked as a con­sul­tant for the de­vel­op­ment of the new show­room, con­firmed this think­ing in­formed the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy.

“With both the se­cu­ri­ty (con­cerns) and what is go­ing on in our coun­try, peo­ple’s homes have be­come their sanc­tu­ary. They want to be able to come home, and they want to be able to be safe in a beau­ti­ful place. So you find that their kitchens and their bath­rooms are all part of their sanc­tu­ary and their well-be­ing. Peo­ple are go­ing very much in­to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and well-be­ing. So I think that’s what’s hap­pen­ing right now. You find it across the world, but al­so, it’s hap­pen­ing big in Trinidad,” said Galt, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at the open­ing of the show­room last month.

Galt ex­plained the de­vel­op­ment of the show­room took over a year, as apart from await­ing ap­provals from Kohler it­self, the com­pa­ny had to nav­i­gate sup­ply chain and for­eign ex­change chal­lenges. The Kohler in­ven­to­ry is cur­rent­ly val­ued at $3 mil­lion.

She said, “There’s al­so the US is­sue of get­ting us to pay for these goods, so there’s al­ways that is­sue as well. It’s con­tain­ers com­ing in, so we fill a con­tain­er, and then we bring it in, and so some­times we have to con­sol­i­date, and that takes a lit­tle while as well. But that’s the ship­ping world in Trinidad.”

How­ev­er, she said the com­pa­ny was able to man­age its sup­ply stock suf­fi­cient­ly ahead of the open­ing of the show­room as well as the planned re­veal of the Gal­le­ria in Sep­tem­ber.

Ar­chi­tect Al­i­son Gros­berg of De­sign­works Ar­chi­tects & In­te­ri­or De­sign­ers al­so con­firmed that her de­signs, fea­tured in the show­room, were meant to evoke the feel­ing of re­lax­ation and self-care to cus­tomers.

“One of the things is a bath­room re­al­ly has be­come a sanc­tu­ary now of well­ness, re­treat and self-care. So a tub is not some­thing that is of­ten used in a warm cli­mate. But per­son­al­ly, I have a tub in my home. I turn on my AC, and I get in­to my love­ly warm tub. That’s part of my self-care ex­pe­ri­ence,” said Gros­berg, who ex­plained that her de­sign as­so­ciate, David Mc­Cann of Dwelz Ltd was giv­en a pic­ture of palm trees at night in Ma­yaro as a guide point for the de­vel­op­ment of the show­room’s theme geared to­wards de­vel­op­ing a feel­ing of es­capism.

She said, “So we want­ed to bring this in; the whole col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of long week­ends at beach hous­es with friends and re­lax­ing in your tub with self-care. We want­ed to cre­ate that kind of ex­pe­ri­ence and let peo­ple in Trinidad see how you could use black san­i­tary­ware from Kohler of this mag­nif­i­cent qual­i­ty that we have here.”

Se­nior sales man­ag­er for Kohler Caribbean, Michael Mon­tal­bano, said the com­pa­ny had a re­newed fo­cus on at-home self-care at the show­room, not­ing that it had a his­to­ry in that re­gard.

“To give you a lit­tle bit of his­to­ry, Kohler in 1873, the first prod­uct that we launched was a well­ness prod­uct, which is ac­tu­al­ly a bath­tub, a stan­dard bath­tub made from a horse trough. So, we’re see­ing ten­den­cies in the in­dus­try al­so, where 31 per cent of homes have at least a small well­ness area in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to them. And that could be any­thing from a small read­ing area, an es­cape area, all the way up to some­thing re­al­ly high end, like an ice bath or a sauna or a whirlpool area, some­thing with jets,” said Mon­tal­bano.

He said the com­pa­ny’s re­search had fur­ther iden­ti­fied the grow­ing de­mand for re­lax­ation spaces at home.

He ex­plained, “There have been oth­er sur­veys as well that con­sumers re­al­ly do val­ue well­ness in their homes. And that’s like right be­low as much as they val­ue their heart health or their cog­ni­tive health. At Kohler, we’re very ex­cit­ed to bring these prod­ucts to life here in Trinidad.”

He ex­plained that the com­pa­ny is al­so set to bring re­cov­ery items such as ice baths and saunas to fur­ther cater to con­sumers seek­ing ad­di­tion­al lay­ers of self-care at home.

Galt dis­closed the show­room was on­ly part one of the com­pa­ny’s plans for T&T.

“We do in­tend to open an­oth­er brand. We have an­oth­er brand, so there’s an­oth­er show­room that will be part two of the Bath Gallery com­ing soon. It’s go­ing to have dif­fer­ent things. Dif­fer­ent prod­ucts that we’re bring­ing in, and we’ve brand­ed it Gal­le­ria, so it will be the Bath Gallery’s own brand, and that’s com­ing. The prod­ucts are al­ready here. The show­room is near­ly open, so by Sep­tem­ber, I think we will be open­ing part two and have like an open house for part two, but we do have prod­uct, and we do have stock.”

CW In­te­ri­ors not­ed there has been a slow­down in cus­tomer traf­fic and busi­ness as seen in re­tail busi­ness through­out the coun­try. The com­pa­ny how­ev­er is op­ti­mistic that sales will pick up in the lat­ter half of the year as home­own­ers typ­i­cal­ly work on home ren­o­va­tions and re­fur­bish­ment projects dur­ing those months.