Gov­ern­ment should say what the plans are for next year’s Car­ni­val

Sama­roo’s suf­fers from both do­mes­tic and ex­port loss

Sup­ports govt’s de­ci­sion to can­cel this year’s fes­ti­val

To­day should have been Car­ni­val Thurs­day. Nor­mal­ly, this would mean by now mas­quer­aders would have ei­ther al­ready col­lect­ed their cos­tumes or start­ed prepar­ing to do so.

In fact, some of you may have been or­gan­is­ing to call in sick from work to­day, to head to a day fete such as Cae­sar’s Army’s AM Beach or Headley’s All-In­clu­sive.

But, in­stead, you are in the of­fice read­ing this.

This is not a nor­mal time. There is no Car­ni­val this year.

Feb­ru­ary 15 and 16 are no longer Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day in this coun­try, no mat­ter what the cal­en­dar on your wall may say.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has pulled the plug on the “Great­est Show on Earth.”

And while this sit­u­a­tion may sim­ply cause a Car­ni­val ta­ban­ca for some.

For oth­ers, this has se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial ram­i­fi­ca­tions.

As Bun­ji Gar­lin (Ian Al­varez) sang in his 2021 So­ca, Heart of the Peo­ple:

“Car­ni­val is a sea that’s deep.”

One en­ti­ty that can at­test to that is the Sama­roo’s Group of Com­pa­nies.

For more than 70 years Sama­roo’s has be­come syn­ony­mous with Car­ni­val.

The com­pa­ny prides it­self as be­ing “the in­ter­na­tion­al Car­ni­val sup­pli­er.”

Sama­roo’s was found­ed in 1949 by the late Nor­man Sama­roo.

The first store was lo­cat­ed at 3-5 Ob­ser­va­to­ry Street in Port-of-Spain start­ing off as a gen­er­al goods sup­pli­er be­fore even­tu­al­ly set­tling in­to the niche of spe­cial­is­ing in the sup­ply of ma­te­ri­als to pro­duce Car­ni­val cos­tumes.

And so with no Car­ni­val this year things have be­come tricky.

“We are hurt­ing and our cus­tomers are hurt­ing,” man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Steve Sama­roo told the Busi­ness Guardian.

In Sep­tem­ber, the com­pa­ny was forced to per­ma­nent­ly close its Port-of-Spain branch be­cause of the pan­dem­ic.

The com­pa­ny now op­er­ates two of­fices, one on Bound­ary Road in San Juan, and the oth­er at the Cross Cross­ing in San Fer­nan­do.

De­spite the fi­nan­cial strain a can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val would cause, Sama­roo said the com­pa­ny was in sup­port of the gov­ern­ment’s call to can­cel the fes­ti­val this year to help in the fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

As a re­sult, the com­pa­ny did not or­der sup­plies this year to help with the fi­nan­cial con­straints there were fac­ing.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence last week Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed that there would def­i­nite­ly be ab­solute­ly no Car­ni­val this year.

“As long as the prob­lem we’re fac­ing is a prob­lem root­ed and fer­tilised by con­gre­ga­tion and close­ness of peo­ple, that’s (Car­ni­val at this time) an oil and wa­ter sit­u­a­tion. Car­ni­val and COVID doh mix,” Row­ley said.

“Let us not for­get that as we miss Car­ni­val, what we don’t want to be a par­tic­i­pant in is Car­ni­val of coffins okay?” he said.

But that was this year.

That was ex­pect­ed, Sama­roo said.

What he would re­al­ly like an an­swer to is what the plans are for the host­ing of Car­ni­val next year.

Sama­roo wants to hear from the gov­ern­ment what the plans are for host­ing Car­ni­val.

And that dis­cus­sion needs to be held as soon as pos­si­ble, Sama­roo said.

“When Car­ni­val is over we start plan­ning for the next one, it takes time to get things in place,” Sama­roo said.

With the ad­vent of the COVID vac­cines and the ex­pec­tant ar­rival of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca to this na­tion’s shores in a few weeks, Sama­roo said the dis­cus­sion on the way for­ward needs to take place now.

“We need them to give us some hope,” Sama­roo added.

The can­cel­la­tion of oth­er Car­ni­vals around the world has al­so im­pact­ed the com­pa­ny sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Sama­roo said.

Sama­roo’s has be­come a ma­jor ex­porter of Car­ni­val raw ma­te­r­i­al.

“As per­sons across dif­fer­ent na­tions in­tro­duce and strive to im­prove their own Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, they would of­ten look at the trends and in­no­va­tions em­a­nat­ing out of Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly since Car­ni­val here is ear­li­er in the year than oth­er Car­ni­vals in dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries,” Sama­roo said.

“Hence as trends are fol­lowed, this would in­vari­ably lead back to the source of these ma­te­ri­als, which would then lead de­sign­ers and cre­ators to Sama­roo’s,” he said.

Sama­roo’s now boasts of in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers as far north as Cana­da and as far south as South Africa.

“Need­less to say, most if not all the Caribbean is­lands make pur­chas­es from us, along with de­sign­ers from dif­fer­ent states in the U.S.,” Sama­roo stat­ed.

When cus­tomers pur­chase from Sama­roo’s they ben­e­fit from the com­pa­ny’s ex­per­tise and years of ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, he said.

To help cus­tomers with pur­chas­ing, Sama­roo said the com­pa­ny is on a thrust to im­prove its on­line shop­ping.

This, he said, will aid in over­com­ing the for­eign ex­change dif­fi­cul­ties that many com­pa­nies around the coun­try, in­clud­ing Sama­roo’s, are cur­rent­ly fac­ing.

An­oth­er prob­lem fac­ing the com­pa­ny, Sama­roo said, is the ris­ing ship­ping cost in the Mid­dle East.

On its on­line shop­ping web­site www.sama­roosltd.com the com­pa­ny of­fers Car­ni­val sup­plies that in­clude ap­pliqués and se­quins, rhine­stones, beads, glit­ter, and an as­sort­ment of feath­ers.

Sama­roo’s is cur­rent­ly has a “Vir­tu­al Car­ni­val Sup­plies Sale” that is card­ed to end to­mor­row.

To over­come the is­sues sur­round­ing the re­stric­tions in place be­cause of COVID, many artistes and en­ter­tain­ers have re­sort­ed to host­ing vir­tu­al events.

The Car­ni­val cal­en­dar is now packed with events by So­ca artistes.

Sama­roo’s, how­ev­er, is un­able to ben­e­fit in any sub­stan­tial way from the vir­tu­al events, he said.

Car­ni­val 2022 is card­ed for Feb­ru­ary 28 and March 1.

Sama­roo said it is ben­e­fi­cial that 2022 will be a late Car­ni­val.

But he warned that to able to en­sure things are put in place for a safe and se­cure Car­ni­val there must be di­a­logue with stake­hold­ers start­ing now.

Sama­roo said a clear plan is need­ed.