Bahamas: Straw Vendors say Native Straw Products are not selling in the Bahamian Straw Market

Straw isn't selling, say vendors
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STRAW just isn't selling, vendors told The Tribune as we took to downtown Nassau for Street Talk in the wake of the arrest of nine straw vendors in New York last week.

It is claimed the bags are a hit among local women, and visitors to this island, who turn down straw products for counterfeit goods they can also find at home.

Telator Strachan, president of the Straw Vendors Association was receiving calls just before midnight on Wednesday night as the situation unfolded.

"Interested Bahamians were concerned, and they wanted to know if there was something they could do to help," she said.

"I understand the government put the tariff high on the bags to discourage them. Yet they know they were bringing these bags in and collecting duty.

"The vendors try to make an honest living with those bags. They bought them and were prepared to pay duty on the items."

Mrs Strachan said everything should be done to bring the arrested vendors home.

Shop owner Lerond Colebrook said: "New York City is the cheapest place to purchase these items from. If you take away the bags, you take away the food out of our mouth, or our customs officers, and for the tourists who come here excitedly for the bags.

"I did a customer survey in my shop, asking them what is their reason for coming to the Bahamas. They say they come to the Bahamas to get a bag.

"Customers say they've been coming several times a year, and we are bringing the tourists to the country."

Musician Kevin Young, said: "I do feel that selling these counterfeit bags destroy what the Bahamas straw market is all about. It deprives major stores which are authorised from getting and selling their merchandise.

"Although they're selling them at cheaper prices, the authorised stores are not getting the sales they need. Some rules and regulations need to be put in place at the reopening of the new straw market."

Vendor Ethel King said: "It is difficult to go and get straw. The poor people have to make a living."

"On the cruise ships they tell the tourist that the straw basket is filled up with bugs, so when the people come here they ask for knock off bags."

Irene Rolle, president of a prayer band group, said: "We have been praying for 37 years in this market for our country and our vendors. We pray that the mercies of God will be extended to the vendors incarcerated in New York."

On Monday, Ms Rolle said they prayed earnestly for the women, and felt really bad about the whole situation.

Although she doesn't sell knock off bags, Ms Rolle is passionate about native straw, and has been supporting the craft all her life.

"If we don't buy from our plaitters of the neighbouring family islands, who make bags from native straw, who is going to support them?" she asks.

"When they see us making straw products by hand, there is nothing else that empowers them to buy our work."

Phillipa Nixon said: "We went to selling knock off bags because we had to go with the flow with what was selling at the time, because straw products weren't and still aren't marketable.

Tourists

"In 2007, the tourists were asking us about the knock off bags. My sister was one of the first vendors who started selling knock off bags. She brought them from the free market in Miami.

"This is what we live off of right now. Whatever we have to go back to we will."

"Right now we pay a $100 difference a year for business license," she said. "Why can't we sell what is valuable to make money?

"Tourists are coming in to buy straw products and people are moving with the times."

Joy Drakes said: "From since I came to the straw market we always had, even down to the T-Shirts, products that had the Bahamas logo on it which are made in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Haiti. We don't have factories to produce this stuff.

"Whatever government decides on this issue, I have to do my job to survive.

"When I did the straw I survived, when I buy knock off, I survived on knock off.

'I will sell it until they shut us down completely.

"Americans like designer bags, they even come with a print-out of the bags they want.

"The straw isn't selling because the cruise ships are telling tourists not to purchase the straw bags because they have the red bug which eats the straw like a termite,"

Wood carver James Rolle, had a more open view of the situation. He said: "Every part of the world, people are making fake items. As long as you could get fake goods at a cheap price, people will sell it.

"Back then the straw market was selling strictly straw work. If you depend on native straw bags, you will have to do without many a day's lunch.

"If I could find some fake wood carving then I'd sell it too. Vendors are not stealing this stuff, but if they get catch with purchasing these knock off items, they have to pay the penalty.

"If I was a vendor, as far as I'm concerned, once the government get the duty I could sell them anyway. You can't tell me they're illegal once you collect the duty.

"You go to the US to buy these fake items. Once you bring them to the Bahamas and pay government duty, they aren't illegal any more.

"If government didn't want them in our country, their job is to take them at the airport over here."

September 25, 2010

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