A program designed to expand market access for family island handicraft vendors could lead to a "proliferation of opportunities" for young Bahamians, according to Don Demeritte, project coordinator for the Bahamas Virtual Platform (BVP).
The pilot program, designed to promote the handicrafts industry and increase utilization of artistic vendors by exposing value chain companies to a global market to propel their sales, hopes to attract 60,000 annual customers, which Demeritte believed was "very achievable," with the BVP potentially taking $20 per sale to sustain itself and continue its marketing efforts.
"Our projections were simple. We knew from our market research that it was easy for us to [attract] 60,000 customers to this e-commerce platform. Markets that some of the Family Islands, particularly Acklins and Mayaguana, never had access to.
"You're talking about exploiting and expanding upon something you already have. The only difference is that they needed a new market and they needed to speak about strategies," said Demeritte.
The Inter-American Development Bank sponsored the project, which is currently focused on the MICAL constituency (Mayaguana, Inagua, Crooked Island, Acklins, and Long Cay).
Demeritte said that the BVP had achieved strong results in collaborating between the handicraft markets of respective Family Islands to provide a "conduit" to the international market.
Statistics provided by the BPV revealed that 91 percent of surveyed vendors were women while 80 percent of vendors were over the age of 50, which Demeritte argued presented clear opportunities for young entrepreneurs in the handicraft industry.
"It's a story that needs to be told. It's a story that should've been shared with every chamber representative for the past four to five years because it leads to opportunity and it speaks to developing something that already exists.
"Why it isn't happening and why it isn't happening quick enough, nobody knows. But the chambers are advocates," he said.
Demeritte said that the prevalence of foreign-made handicrafts spoke to the need for greater transparency and accountability in the national handicraft industry, and suggested that the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI) conduct longevity studies of the industry to ensure authenticity.
"Every artisan would have a unique user ID so that any product that left The Bahamas would be stamped and we'd know exactly who delivered it, where it came from, and so on. That speaks to accountability and authenticity, and that's something that no other program [recently] speaks to.
"We need to champion the cause. This speaks to concrete jobs, thousands of jobs, that impact every island in The Bahamas. If we had one-tenth the budget of the Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival the results would be exponentially better," Demeritte said.
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