Raphael John-Lall

Founder of Van­i­ty In­ter­na­tion­al, Sher­ma Best is con­fi­dent that her in­no­v­a­tive, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly cold tow­els will con­tin­ue to break in­to new re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Best, who grew up in San Fer­nan­do and is cur­rent­ly based in New York City in the US, shared her suc­cess­ful busi­ness sto­ry with the Busi­ness Guardian.

“I grew up in San Fer­nan­do, South Trinidad. How­ev­er, op­er­at­ing out of the US pro­vides ac­cess to a wide range of re­sources, in­clud­ing tech­nol­o­gy, ed­u­ca­tion, and busi­ness in­fra­struc­ture. This ac­cess has been ben­e­fi­cial and in­te­gral to ex­pand­ing my op­er­a­tions.”

“Cold tow­els” al­so known as cool­ing tow­els, are de­signed to pro­vide a re­fresh­ing, cool­ing sen­sa­tion through evap­o­ra­tive cool­ing, of­ten used for heat stress re­lief or dur­ing out­door ac­tiv­i­ties.

Best’s in­no­va­tion, fu­elled by her in­sight in­to cli­mate change and pas­sion for im­pact­ful so­lu­tions, gives her brand Van­i­ty Cold Tow­els a unique edge. The com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty is ev­i­dent in its ef­forts to use eco-friend­ly ma­te­ri­als and part­ner with or­gan­i­sa­tions ad­vo­cat­ing for cli­mate con­scious­ness.

She gave the de­tails of her en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly tow­els.

“These tow­els are made from nat­ur­al cot­ton fibers which are biodegrad­able and de­com­pose much faster than syn­thet­ic ma­te­ri­als. Us­ing biodegrad­able tow­els helps re­duce the over­all en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact. Un­like con­ven­tion­al sin­gle-use prod­ucts, which con­tribute to land­fill waste, these tow­els break down nat­u­ral­ly, re­turn­ing to the earth with­out leav­ing harm­ful residues.”

Her en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty drove her to cre­ate a prod­uct that not on­ly of­fers im­me­di­ate phys­i­cal re­lief, but is al­so aligned with broad­er en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, such as cli­mate change. Recog­nis­ing that ris­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures were be­com­ing a more fre­quent con­cern, Best saw the need for portable, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious so­lu­tions to help peo­ple cope with the heat and hu­mid­i­ty.

She said she al­so en­vi­sioned Van­i­ty Cold Tow­els as a prod­uct that felt lux­u­ri­ous and in­dul­gent, while al­so be­ing sus­tain­able and ef­fec­tive. Un­der­stand­ing the pow­er of aro­mather­a­py, Best in­fused her cold tow­els with a laven­der scent. Laven­der is renowned for its calm­ing prop­er­ties, re­liev­ing stress and pro­vid­ing a sense of re­lax­ation.

Born out of Car­ni­val

She ex­plained the con­di­tions that gave rise to her ideas for her prod­uct.

Best’s in­spi­ra­tion for Van­i­ty Cold Tow­els sparked dur­ing the Trinidad Car­ni­val 2023, when she no­ticed the re­lief a sim­ple cold tow­el could bring amidst the heat and hu­mid­i­ty.

She said this trans­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ence made Van­i­ty Cold Tow­els not on­ly a prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion but al­so a source of com­fort and well­ness. In 2024, Best of­fi­cial­ly launched Van­i­ty Cold Tow­els at Trinidad Car­ni­val, in­tro­duc­ing them at all-in­clu­sive events such as Fa­ti­ma Fete, Pinknic, Strut Boat Cruise to name a few. The prod­uct was al­so fea­tured in Spir­it Mas and pri­vate carts in Bliss and Tribe dur­ing the dy­nam­ic road ex­pe­ri­ence on Mon­day and Tues­day.

The re­sponse was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, she said.

“Rev­ellers mar­velled at how these cold tow­els en­hanced their Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence, pro­vid­ing much-need­ed re­lief and re­lax­ation. The suc­cess in T&T quick­ly fu­elled ex­pan­sion across the Caribbean, reach­ing four oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, and even­tu­al­ly to Lon­don and the Unit­ed States.”

She al­so said Van­i­ty Cold Tow­els be­came a hit at di­verse events in­clud­ing golf tour­na­ments, rooftop sum­mer par­ties and with­in the grow­ing fit­ness lifestyle scene.

Man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts

These in­no­v­a­tive tow­els are not her first ven­ture in­to the world of busi­ness.

“I was the founder and own­er of Tribeca Sa­lon & Spa at One Wood­brook Place, Port-of-Spain for more than a decade. Re­flect­ing on such an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence al­lows you to ap­pre­ci­ate the growth, learn­ing, and im­pact achieved over the years. It al­so pro­vides valu­able in­sights and the foun­da­tion ap­plic­a­ble to fu­ture ven­tures. The beau­ty in­dus­try is dy­nam­ic,and sus­tain­ing the busi­ness would have re­quired adapt­ing to new trends, tech­nolo­gies, and cus­tomer pref­er­ences, which in­clud­ed at­tend­ing in­dus­try events, train­ing, and adopt­ing eco-friend­ly or sus­tain­able prac­tices.”

She added that she has tak­en the busi­ness one step ahead by do­ing her own man­u­fac­tur­ing in Chi­na.

“I start­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing in 2024. With nu­mer­ous large and tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties, com­pa­nies in Asia can not on­ly fa­cil­i­tate high-vol­ume or­ders but are able to pro­duce to your ex­act spec­i­fi­ca­tions at scale. This is es­sen­tial for me so that I can scale pro­duc­tion rapid­ly to meet the grow­ing de­mands. Asian man­u­fac­tur­ing of­fers com­pet­i­tive labour cost which al­lows my prod­uct to be cost-ef­fec­tive.”

She al­so spoke about some of her chal­lenges.

“Co­or­di­nat­ing dif­fer­ent stages of pro­duc­tion was chal­leng­ing the first year, par­tic­u­lar­ly ship­ping with­in strict time­lines, which re­quires ex­cep­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skills and project man­age­ment. Pro­duc­tion and ship­ping en­tail nu­mer­ous costs, in­clud­ing ma­te­ri­als, labour, trans­porta­tion and tar­iffs. New en­trants must de­vel­op ac­cu­rate bud­get­ing and pric­ing strate­gies to main­tain prof­itabil­i­ty.”

Giv­en her suc­cess­es, she con­fi­dent­ly looks to the fu­ture.

By turn­ing a sim­ple con­cept in­to a glob­al phe­nom­e­non, Best said she not on­ly of­fered a re­fresh­ing­ly in­no­v­a­tive prod­uct but al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of adap­tive so­lu­tions in the glob­al chang­ing cli­mate—com­bin­ing lux­u­ry with es­sen­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“Through the sooth­ing em­brace of laven­der-scent­ed cold tow­els, Van­i­ty pro­vides a mo­ment of peace—a sym­bol of how small in­no­va­tions can pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant com­fort, demon­strat­ing lead­er­ship in merg­ing busi­ness suc­cess with sus­tain­able ini­tia­tives.”

She con­clud­ed by say­ing, she will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate the busi­ness at in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

“I will en­sure high stan­dards in prod­uct qual­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy to build a strong rep­u­ta­tion and en­cour­age re­peat pur­chas­es. Im­ple­ment mar­ket­ing cam­paigns specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed at cor­po­rate clients, high­light­ing ben­e­fits like in­creased client sat­is­fac­tion and brand as­so­ci­a­tion with lux­u­ry.”