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Showing posts with label straw market Bahamas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label straw market Bahamas. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Bahamas government should let straw vendors know that this is the last straw market the people of The Islands will build for them... Going forward, straw vendors and their association need to start thinking of ways to be autonomous

The last market for straw vendors


thenassauguardian editorial


Nassau, The Bahamas




The House of Assembly is debating rules to govern the new straw market at Bay Street.  The market is a gift of sorts to vendors from the government of The Bahamas.  A visitor to The Bahamas might wonder why a government would build a multi-million dollar commercial space for independent business people in a commercial district.

Well, our political parties regard vendors collectively as a ‘special case’.

The parties think they must ensure that regular black merchants have a space on the main part of Bay Street, a district historically controlled by white merchants.

There is consensus on this point by the governing Free National Movement (FNM) and the opposition Progressive Liberal Party (PLP).

The PLP planned, as it is good at doing, a market between 2002 and 2007.  It built no market, however.  The FNM, which has been in office from 2007, has built a market.  It will open soon.  The old market was destroyed by fire in 2001 and vendors have been in ‘temporary’ accommodations since.

At this stage, we are past the relevant point of debating whether the government should have spent more than 10 million dollars on this market.  What we must consider is if such a practice should continue in the future and if vendors should graduate from state grace and welfare and become independent.

When governments offer subsidies to local industries, the objective should be to help Bahamian businesses start and build capital bases from which they can operate independently.  The subsidies should not last forever.  The subsidies cannot last forever because the state has many responsibilities, some of which become urgent abruptly.

For example, there are currently intertwined crises affecting The Bahamas – crime and education.

The government of The Bahamas needs to place as much of its focus as possible on these issues. Coddling long-pampered merchants should become less of a priority during these times.  Business people take risks.

The state can help and set policies assisting entrepreneurs.  The state, however, should not take care of business people forever.

The Bahamas has changed since the government became the patron of straw vendors decades ago.  Majority rule and independence have come about and opportunity in The Bahamas is more equally distributed now than it was in the earlier parts of the 20th century.  There is now no bogeyman keeping anyone down.

The government should let vendors know that this is the last market the people of The Bahamas will build for them.  Going forward, vendors and their association need to start thinking of ways to be autonomous.

If they want to operate as a collective, more of the revenue taken in by these merchants would need to be set aside to create an empowered association.

Such a body, run by vendors, would then have the resources to purchase the market and administer the affairs of vendors.  The government could then get back to its role as regulator.

Our major political parties should push to graduate vendors from state welfare.

In doing so, they will become better business people and the Public Treasury will be less burdened.

Oct 11, 2011

thenassauguardian editorial

Sunday, September 26, 2010

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

Straw isn't selling, say vendors
tribune242


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

tribune242

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Bahamas: Can't justify Straw Market's counterfeit trade

Can't justify Straw Market's counterfeit trade
tribune242 editorial



MANY Tribune readers were shocked at the attitude of straw vendors Tuesday on learning that nine of their own were arrested in New York and charged with allegedly purchasing counterfeit designer goods for resale in the Bay Street market.

The cry of the locals seemed a plea to the Bahamas government to question the authority of US law enforcement to snatch their life's bread from their tables.

Although many vendors are aware that they are trading in counterfeit goods, they seem to think they have a right to do so. There is no apparent awareness -- despite many warnings -- that such a trade is against the law and that there are serious penalties for law breakers.

The president of the Straw Business Persons Society, a reverend no less, went so far as to tell our reporter that unless someone can provide a means for Bahamian vendors to get the counterfeit designer bags without risking getting caught by US authorities "things are going to get rough" for vendors and their families.

Let us suppose that someone did find a means to get these illegal goods onto their shelves, don't they know that they could be arrested by local police for doing so? It is only because our police have not been as aggressive as they should have been about enforcing the law that the incident in New York took place this week.

The US government has accused Bahamian police officers of being "complicit" in the straw market's counterfeit trade. The Bahamas' enforcement laws, it said, are "lax" when it comes to protecting intellectual property rights. Tired of dealing with a country of "lax" laws, US authorities decided to enforce the law themselves -- especially when it is broken on their own territory.

"I would feel sorry for the Bahamas if we have to stop selling these bags," the Society's president told our reporter. "It will affect the vendors and it will affect The Bahamas. These bags are generating a lot of funds. The whole economy will feel it. The tourists come and they have to go to the ATM to purchase these bags. I guarantee you they wouldn't go to the ATM to buy a straw bag.

"If you look at the straw bags, you would be surprised to know how long they were hanging there. The knock off move quickly. So if you are looking to put food on the table that's what you do."

Does this argument justify breaking the law? If so then why arrest the little thief in the night who breaks into your home because he too has to put food on his table?

True it is stealing of a different kind of property, but it is still stealing.

It is probably the same argument used by the pirates when Woodes Rodgers - on pain of the noose -- tried to restore legitimate commerce to these islands.

Our reporter walked through the "world famous straw market" on Tuesday to find that "virtually every stall sells at least some fake designer goods, and many of them are heavily-draped in knock-off designer handbags of all shapes, colours and sizes."

The vendors made no attempt to hide them.

Although many vendors have acknowledged that their goods are counterfeit -- from such designer brands as Gucci, Prada, Dolce, Gabana and others-- their attitude is that theirs is the right to sell. The pushing of these "hot" items was so obvious that if the police were in fact intent on applying the law, the market could have been cleaned out in a matter of days. But, of course, the political fall-out also has to be reckoned with. Straw vendors have always expected rules to be bent in their favour, so the squeals would have been loud and furious had there been a hard local crack down.

The "world famous straw market" disappeared from our shores many years ago -- ever since the days when it was removed from its Rawson Square location - a colourful scene of Bahamian basket women, plaiting their bags, hats, toys and mats, while their children learned the trade by their sides. It was a scene that inspired poets and artists. But no more.

Today we have a cheap flea market, which as Mr Charles Klonaris, chairman of the Nassau Tourism and Development Board, pointed out last year is of no benefit to the Bahamas.

We hope that taxpayers' money, now being spent to create a new straw market, will be one that displays local arts and crafts of which Bahamians can be proud -- and visitors will want to purchase as souvenirs. "But what they are producing now," said Mr Klonaris, "is just not acceptable."

September 22, 2010

tribune242

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Bahamas: A straw market filled with handmade crafts 'long gone'

A straw market filled with handmade crafts 'long gone'
By RUPERT MISSICK JR
Chief Reporter
rmissick@tribunemedia.net:



We are a modern culture fixated on immediate gratification, cheap fast food, drive through windows, and instant downloads. To keep up with the insatiable demand from consumers and ensure their bottom lines, some manufacturers throw away commitments to quality and hand crafting like relics of the past.

Complicit consumers, who want cheap goods without paying the true cost of materials and labour, fuel this practice.

This is the dilemma facing straw vendors who are set to take up residence in a new multi-million dollar market next year.

A fire destroyed the previous structure in September 2001 and a contract for the construction of a new market was signed between Cavalier Construction and the government in December of last year. The building carries a $11.2 million price tag and has a 78- week completion timeline.

The design of the 34,000-square foot straw market as "practical" and will include an enclosed mezzanine level of approximately 4,500 square feet. An elevator (to the south section only) will service the air-conditioned mezzanine, and there will be space to accommodate children's activities after school.

The structure will house 442 regular vendors with sale booths, 31 demonstration booths for the creation and sale of crafts, 14 carvers' booths in an outdoor market area and provision for food vendors along the waterfront.

The thing is though, the government may be constructing this impressive structure to house sellers offering illegal knock-offs of designer items at attractive prices -- rather than the traditional straw items for which the market initially became famous.

Cracking down on vendors who sell these knock-off items may put the government in a bit of a moral dilemma, however. Licensing fees are to this day collected from brick and mortar businesses that make their profits selling illegally duplicated DVDs and CDs.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter is, the days of a straw market filled with handmade items crafted by skilled artisans are long gone. The sale of mass manufactured goods and highly coveted "replica" designer products has for many years made the production and sale of straw work nearly obsolete.

Former Senator and President of the Straw Vendors Association Telator Strachan, in a recent interview with Tribune reporter Alesha Cadet said that there is not a high enough demand for authentic Bahamian souvenirs to support the production cost of straw market vendors.

This lack of demand for locally produced goods leads Bahamians to spend almost $300 million per year importing handicraft items to sell to tourists.

The majority of the items in the market are purchased wholesale from an international distributor like the American Gift Corporation -- their stamp "agiftcorp" can be found printed at the bottom of some souvenirs.

The company produces souvenirs with customizable names and locations, and boasts it is "America's leading source for souvenir giftware since 1925."

The company is very familiar with the Nassau Straw Market and a sales representative said the company gets "loads of clients" from there.

First-time orders to AGC have to be a minimum of $500 and re-order a minimum of $300 - there is a two dozen minimum on individual items.

Vendors generally remove all signs of foreign manufacture but sometimes they overlook some items and the sticker or tag can be plainly read "Made in China."

Overcrowding in the Straw Market has increased competition among vendors, leaving the entrepreneurs desperate to ensure their ability to make a profit. Changing tastes and the drastic increase in the number of visitors to New Providence over the past 50 years or so has also had its affect on the practicability of producing straw items.

"Up to now we've always done native straw work, but over the years it has evolved into selling other bags and other things. We must remember that there were not that many straw vendors and not that many tourists travelling into the Bahamas, so we were able to sell native items.

"As time went on we had to diverse to other items, the local native items were not sufficient for the tourist, they wanted other items. The tourist would complain that the straw hats were scratchy, that is why we had to cut back on selling straw hats," Ms Strachan said.

This doesn't mean that there are no persons in the market creating and selling locally manufactured items. As Mrs Strachan points out there are still a number of persons still selling straw bags, but like anything else when you overcrowd any space "you tend not to notice."

Same goes for solid wood statues - vendors purchase from the wood carvers that surround the outskirts of the market to put in their stalls. Most beaded jewellery is made locally as vendors purchase the materials (line, various beads, clasps) in bulk.

A few vendors also produce some jewellery and then sell over other vendors.

"People don't see the whole picture; they only see the knock off bags. The local straw bags that were made years ago are still being made, it's still straw, the straw is what makes it authentic," she said.

Cash remains king, however and Straw Market vendors are often challenged by the fact that quality straw bags are too costly to produce.

Mrs Strachan, who has represented the market's vendors association as president for 55 years, lamented "nothing remains the same, overtime everything changes."

"It is expensive to make the straw bags," Ms Strachan said, "I do not know how lucrative it is going to be for them because you have to spend so much and you don't make any profit.

"Once you could have harvested the straw at a reasonable price, then people would be able to make these items and sell them at a reasonable price," she said.

As the new market is being constructed, with a Spring 2011 opening anticipated, the rules of engagement between the vendors and their landlords may change.

The Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation's (BAIC) had introduced a one-month training programme to teach interested Bahamians how to produce the items locally for distribution to visitors.

The corporation's executive chairman Edison Key said that in light of the massive import bill, incurred by persons bringing in souvenirs the training was part of a bigger plan to empower Bahamians and create employment.

He added that more than 1,000 people have graduated from the programme so far, and there are many more interested individuals.

Mr Key said when the production side of handicraft manufacturing takes off in a "big way", the Government will have to make changes and policy supporting local manufacturers.

"If we can train 10,000, it would go a long way to stem some of the imports of souvenir items that amount to around $300 million," he said.

He added that even if the Government could reduce that import figure by 50 per cent it could create a lot of employment for Bahamians. "People could be self-employed right away," said Mr Key.

The Bahamas has vexed a number of international organizations over its seeming lack of interest in prosecuting or at least shutting down persons who violate the intellectual property rights (IPR) or copyright violators.

The office of the United States trade representative, which among other things reviews IPR practices as part of its bi-annual review of the operation of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, is continuing to evaluate the IPR of beneficiaries, including The Bahamas, to assess compliance with the preference programme's eligibility criteria, which include the extent to which a country prohibits its nationals from broadcasting US copyrighted materials without permission.

And as mentioned before there are more stores selling bootleg DVDs than legitimate ones. The same goes for luxury goods like cigars. There is a proliferation of "fake" Cuban cigar vendors who outnumber sellers who peddle the legitimate products.

The legal issues surrounding knock-off designer items are a little complicated. Companies or individuals who produce the fake products circumvent IPR and copyright law by changing just enough not to be a direct copy. What makes it illegal is attempting to make an exact copy and passing it off as the item it is meant to be imitating.

For example an imitation Gucci purse that copies the shape and print of the original may not be illegal but one that also includes the Gucci trade mark is.

Knock-offs also sell for far below the price of the original.

An investigation conducted by Tribune Reporter Ava Turnquest revealed that most of the "replica" items sold in the Straw Market range from $30 up to $120 depending on their size.

It is rare for any bag, regardless of the brand, to be over $100 in the market and vendors often lower the price even further to bait sceptical customers.

She found that in nearly every stall that sold knock-offs the top four brands were: Coach, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Juicy Couture.

One can buy a large shoulder bags with the classic interlocking GG motif for $95 when the original sells on the company's website for $2,099. Totes or smaller bags with the same print average around $600.

The ironic thing about it a few blocks away John Bull sells the original product.

Juicy Couture's velour and terry handbags are the most popular by this brand in the straw Market featuring the brand's iconic crown emblem pink and brown print.

Mrs Strachan, who has spent 55 years in the market points out that things are in a constant state of flux and in order to make a good living the vendors have to keep up with the times. "Nothing remains the same, overtime everything changes," she said. "We have to sell what we can make a small profit on."

June 07, 2010

tribune242