CARIBBEAN LED SOLUTIONS
LIGHTING THE WAY
Sustainable Business Magazine speaks with Saleem Khan, Director and Founder of Caribbean LED Solutions, about the incredible success his company has had. He explains how it not only leads the LED lighting solutions market in Trinidad & Tobago today, but created that market in the first place. Caribbean LED Solutions was established in Trinidad & Tobago in 2011 by Saleem Khan. LED lighting was unusual and innovative in the country at the time, but the company had success with its first project at Alchemy Night Club in Port of Spain. Founder and Director, Mr. Khan, describes this first project to Sustainable Business Magazine: “It felt very playful at the time as we didn’t expect to become such a profound business. The nightclub’s staircase was painted black so it was very dark. We put in LED lighting and it worked fantastically. That success peaked our interest in LEDs as a lighting solution and we’ve been tinkering with them ever since.” However, Caribbean LED Solutions was so ahead of the curve that it wasn’t entering a market space – it had to create one. Mr. Khan expands on the company’s early history:
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“We got into LED solutions in 2013, at which point we were buying a selling them. However, we were doing that from the US because there was no Caribbean market at the time. Importing from the US led to some problems. People asked us why our lights were so expensive and, when they went bad, why couldn’t we repair them. “That became frustrating so I opened an LED light up and realised that it was just an electrical circuit. There wasn’t any special gas or filaments inside them like in
