our story
The Bahamas is not just a place you visit.
It is something you experience. It is something that gets into you, and once it does, it never fully leaves.
It is something you experience. It is something that gets into you, and once it does, it never fully leaves.
In 2017, Vida Cayo launched as a side gig for Founder, CEO and Creative Director Tino Sands, who was working full-time in banking at the time. Flip-flops were the only product, three designs, one for men and two for women. Inventory was stored in his old bedroom because there was no money for storage. The brand did four or five pop-ups a year at popular events, riding whatever crowd was already there. When it wasn't at a pop-up, sales happened in parking lots, gas stations, outside people's jobs. Nothing sophisticated. In hindsight, a bit risky. That was the whole operation for a while.
Every product, campaign, and communication starts with Bahamian culture, not with what tourists expect to find. Authenticity is a discipline, not a tone.
We don't announce premium through price alone. We earn it through craft, restraint, and the quality of the story attached to every piece.
Being the Bahamian brand doesn't mean being inaccessible. The culture is the invitation. Everyone who genuinely connects with it is welcome.
We treat The Bahamas as something worth preserving. Our products are artifacts of moments, places, and feelings that deserve to be remembered.
An ongoing collection series. Each volume celebrates a specific Bahamian place, experience, or cultural moment through considered design. A visual time capsule. This is a record of the culture, told one volume at a time.
I loved to sketch growing up, nothing serious, just the way some kids doodle through class and after school, with hopes of becoming a starving artist one day. I figured out fast that wasn't as good a plan as it seemed when I was a kid. But that love of sketching, and a fascination with architecture that developed later, had me set on becoming an architect. Then track and field took over most of my teenage years, enough that architecture became a distant memory. A track career that didn't materialize led me to a more reliable pursuit: finance, and a career in banking.
I spent four years in banking before considering business school. I was studying for the GMAT (still gives me nightmares thinking about it), chasing a score that would get me in, when the idea hit on a late Wednesday night at the library: Bahamian currency, printed on flip-flops. I wasn't thinking about starting a brand. I was giving the little boy who'd given up on being a creative years ago a new outlet.