Craftsman hopeful for the future, eager to export items
Published:Saturday | January 18, 2014 | 12:00 AM
Carl Gilchrist, Gleaner Writer
OCHO RIOS, St Ann:
JUST OVER 20 years ago, in 1993, St Ann craft producer Victor Wallace got the break every manufacturer dreams of.
He got an order valued at US$80,000 from Belgium for his products, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and anklets made from local materials such as cow horns, coconut shells, conch shells, and mother of pearl, but lack of financial support meant he could not fill the order. The banks refused to even listen to him.
"In 1993, JAMPRO had a pamphlet for me and they sent it to Belgium. A lady there asked me to send some samples, and I did that," Wallace told Rural Xpress.
"She then gave me an order. It was about US$80,000 worth of work, and I couldn't get a dime from the bank to finance it because nobody would talk to me. It's not a nice thing to say, but it's true. And that would have been a big break for me."
Today, Wallace is a fisherman, but he still manufactures accessories as a secondary source of income. For the last seven years, he has operated from the compound of the Marcus Garvey Youth Information Centre in St Ann's Bay. He employs one person to assist him on a full-time basis and another part time.
Wallace displays his products at a hotel one day per week. Outside of that, he tries to sell wholesale to gift shops.
But Wallace has renewed hope that one day he will begin exporting his products.
He buys his raw material from various sources. The cow horns he gets from a Kingston-based abattoir; coconut shells from restaurants; and from fishermen, he gets conch shells and mother of pearl.
Dozens at a time
Wallace said he and one worker can make over two dozen pairs of earrings per day from scratch.
"I think I'm going to give up the fishing and just continue on this," Wallace disclosed.
"I want to expand, but I want to retool now, but I have to wait a little while first."
The tools he uses have served him for more than 20 years. Now, he wants more sophisticated tools to speed up production and make new designs, and he dreams of another export opportunity.
The tools he needs are not available locally, so he will have to source them from abroad.
"There is a future for it, you know, there is a future. I realise there is a future for me because for the last couple of weeks, people have been asking me to supply them. So I'm confident things will pick up."