J'can craft making it regionally

FOLLOWING the staging of a Caribbean Craft Marketplace in Barbados last September, most of the 72 Jamaican small business persons who attended received orders that lasted them until the first quarter of this year.

According to a release from JAMPRESS, Mr. Neville Madden, marketing executive at Jamaica Promotions Corpor-ation (JAMPRO), said, "We are talking about orders valuing as high as US$20,000 with the potential for repeat orders."

"Our responsibility is to identify the private sector persons who have the readiness and the capability to pursue the market in the Caribbean," said Mr. Madden. He said that the agency participates in about 10 Caribbean trade shows per year and leads five or six trade missions to the region.

Mr. Madden said that JAMPRO plans to undertake three trade mission to and participate in two trade shows in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada and St. Kitts and Nevis during the next two months.

Noting that Jamaican traders sell mostly apparel, craft and proceeded food in the Caribbean, he described the region as a "testing ground to get the feet of our young manufacturers wet so that after they gain the experience they can take on the challenges of the bigger market".

"We strategically chose the Caribbean at this point for small companies so that they can use it as a stepping stone to build up their manufacturing capacity and benefit from the economy of sale for a period of time."

Pauline Gray, executive director of the Jamaica Exporters Association (JEA) said, "Caribbean markets are small and people can walk the streets and do competitive analysis in terms of price and quality. While in a bigger market they could get lost and don't know where to start."

Reporting on a recent JAMPRO trade mission to Cayman, she said "the overall feedback was good", with most business persons being able to appoint an agent or a distributor, "which was their objective in going on the trade mission.

"Cayman, as a United States (US) dollar linked economy, pays well and has high expectations. Therefore price is not so much as issue as quality and delivery. So a Jamaican exporter is perhaps able to compete better in that market than maybe in a Trinidad market."

Pointing to the fact that Jamaican goods are reaching a larger market through the purchases of cruise ship passengers who visit other Caribbean islands, Mr. Madden notes that a country like St. Martin, although having a small population, receives up to seven cruise ships per day.

"On a recent visit to St. Lucia, while four cruise ships were in port, I saw Jamaican products in the stores. It was the same thing when I visited craft markets at the port in St. Martin. I saw Bob Marley T-shirts, Jamaican sculptures and Rasta caps, all made in Jamaica," he said.

JAMPRO is encouraged that its efforts to expose local manufacturers and exporters in the Caribbean are paying off. Craft vendors and craft makers from north coast towns, who make up the bulk of the 72 persons who went to Barbados last September, have readily signed on to attend a trade show to be held shortly in Martinique.

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