Over the weekend, the Omni Auditorium at Broward College, Broward County, Florida will host one of the single largest creative contingents ever to travel from Guyana to the United States. It is a quest from which the participants hope to realise a measure of commercial success. The creative industries in Guyana comprise mostly persistent triers whose returns never seem to match the efforts that they make. This weekend is one of those rare opportunities for designers, manufacturers and craftspeople to cash in on a potentially far more lucrative market.
The bigger mission, some of the participants told Stabroek Business earlier this week, is to seek to have the Guyanese creative industries make structured and permanent inroads into a fiercely competitive market at a time when fresh waves of challenges are emerging particularly from Asia. The failure of our creative industries to compete effectively on the global market up until now has been a reflection of our failure to market the country effectively. “A lot of our underachievement has to do with the fact that internationally Guyana is not really known for its creative skills,” one of the participants in the weekend event told Stabroek Business.
The Guyana Trade, Tourism and Investment Expo 2014, the name given to the event, is being sponsored by Hazelle P Rogers, Florida State Represen-tative (District 95) and County Mayor Barbara Sharief. The event will also serve as an opportunity for the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) the state agency responsible for – among other things – promoting Guy-ana’s goods and services abroad and which, until now has been regarded as an underachiever, to demonstrate that it can raise its game as far as marketing Guyana abroad is concerned. The initiative is supported by the Consulate of Guyana in Florida. Other partnering agencies include Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business Development, Enterprise Florida, the Greater Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce of Florida and the Global Trade Chamber.
Local participants in the event told Stabroek Business prior to their departure from Guyana that its real significance reposed in the fact that it was highly unusual for local small businesses to secure opportunities to sell their goods on the international market.
Stabroek Business has learnt that earlier in the week many of the participants secured the opportunities to display and market their goods to gatherings that included Guy-anese in the diaspora. According to reports, there will be opportunities for the local producers to engage Florida-based distributors in an effort to increase their market share. During their stay in the US, the Guyanese are also expected to meet shipping establishments to discuss the movement of raw material and finished products to and from Guyana.
The categories of creative products on show at the Florida event include home accessories, wooden sculpture, leather products, fashion garments, processed foods (pepper sauces, spices, etc), furniture, decking, costume jewellery, basketry, and Tibisiri craft.
Stabroek Business understands the part of the focus of the mission to Florida is to help promote Guyana’s tourism product and investment opportunities.
The participants, most of whom were scheduled to arrive in Florida on Tuesday, were involved in a number of activities including courtesy calls, one-on-one business meetings and of course the formal opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony held on Thursday evening. The visit to the US also included a workshop titled ‘Doing Business with Guyana’ and a matchmaker programme through which companies interested in distributorships and/or ongoing purchases of products on show at the expo can team up with local partners.
As part of the facilitation process, Go-Invest consolidated and shipped the consignment to Florida ahead of the October 31 – November 1 expo. The local agency also negotiated reduced air fares, hotel accommodation and transportation. Additionally, participants’ portfolios were sent to Florida ahead of the event.
Go-Invest has been involved in supporting the participation of Guyanese in overseas fashion fairs and other creative events for more than ten years. Similar events have been staged in Antigua, Barbados, St Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada and in Orlando, New York, Atlanta and Miami in the US.
