A 24-year-old Guyanese craftsman who has won both national recognition and high marks from the Institute of Private Enterprise Develop-ment (IPED) for his dedicated entrepreneurship, is hoping to secure the support of the public and private sectors to facilitate his participation in the June 27-30 Barbados Manufacturers Exhibition (BMEX) at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in Bridgetown. Lexton Williams whose LW Creations has attracted considerable attention in the local art and craft community told Stabroek Business in an interview earlier this week that his decision to travel to the prestigious regional manufacturers’ exhibition is based on his conviction that the local art and craft industry needs to break through the glass ceiling that confines high-quality work to very limited local markets and stunts the growth of the industry, while retarding the economic progress of artists and craftspeople.
“We need to be realistic about this. The situation is not good. People struggle in silence,” Williams says. The problem stems from an ever-widening gap between the vocal acknowledgement of the creative talents of local artists and craftspeople and the transformation of those rave reviews into sales, he says.
Williams believes that most of Guyana’s crafts- people persist at a subsistence level, periodically seizing the limited opportunities afforded by an event like the annual state-run GuyExpo to make a proverbial killing. Otherwise, they may meet a visitor to Guyana whose discerning eye recognises commercial potential in their work. For the artists and craftspeople themselves the returns are modest. It is the people who buy their craft in bulk who rake in the returns. The problems of high cost of production and limited markets were patently apparent during the 2007 Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean. The promised growth in the overseas market after the visitors had become exposed to “local talent” has never materialised. Williams notes that every year, just around the period of GuyExpo, “nice things” get said about the craft industry. “Nice things,” he says, don’t amount to much in real terms. After GuyExpo, the craftspeople return to their customary breadline hustle.
Having been in the business of manufacturing and marketing craft for almost ten years, he has clearly grown impatient with the constraints of limited business opportunities. What he seeks to go along with the praise which his handiwork has already attracted is patronage. The problem is a familiar one. His work may be easy on the eye, but the local market continues to be sluggish.
Initially encouraged by the support he received from IPED, Williams expanded his business from two products—pencil cases and passport cases—in 2006 to a much broader range that includes wallets, handbags and computer cases. Qualitatively, his company LW Designs has grown too; the intricate designs embroidered on his products are the outcome of his investment in training.
Williams may have secured a measure of recognition including the Entrepre-neur of the Year Award in 2008 but his financial returns remain limited. He attributes the poor financial showing of his own enterprise and the art and craft industry as a whole to several factors including limited visitor arrivals, a market constrained by a lack of spending power and the pressures associated with having to compete with the surfeit of much cheaper imports.
He complains that try as he might to create a competitive edge the “superior quality” of his own work is cancelled out by the fact that high costs of production compel him to push his prices above those of his competitors. Williams estimates that he needs to sell upwards of 500 pieces to “stay afloat”. He is unable to do that here. The shops that take his products do so, on a concessionary basis; the goods are placed on display without the benefit from any real marketing “push”. At the end of the day much of it sells slowly. It is the same, he believes, with other craftspeople. GuyExpo and the various other local fairs and exhibitions provide limited opportunities to attract the mass market. However, the costs associated with attracting those markets and can be prohibitive for small businesses and those opportunities are far too few. Overseas trade fairs and exhibitions are potentially lucrative, though Williams points out that given the travel, accommodation and shipping costs few local craftspeople can afford those events. Clearly frustrated by the uncertainties associated with a limited local market Williams has turned his attention to the region. He says his creations have made an impact there and he concedes that he is gearing his operations to place a greater focus on Trinidad and Tobago. During the period that he had been selling in Port of Spain “business had been much better than it is in Guyana,” he says. He can sell in excess of 200 pieces in Trinidad weekly. That far exceeds the Guyana market. Williams’ current preoccupations are with trying to expand his Grove, East Bank Demerara operations in order to increase his output. He says, however, that in the foreseeable future he wants to retain his local market while focusing more attention to securing a greater regional market share. “I am determined to ensure that my work maintains a Guyanese identity but at the end of the day I need to expand my market. If you talk to most local craftspeople they will tell you pretty much the same thing,” he says. Williams hopes that participation in BMEX will increase regional consumer awareness of his own products and encourage other local craftspeople to participate in that event. “It occurs to me that Barbados is a tourist hub in the region and that the BMEX event could provide another entry point into the region for the goods that I produce. The way I see it, I will be promoting Guyanese creations and that, at the end of the day, is good for all of Guyana,” he says.
