AfricaNow! winning the hearts of buyers
Monday, March 8 2010
At the recent New York International Gift Fair and Ambiente, the largest European gift fair, AfricaNow! presented West African companies to professional buyers of various stripes. Some buyers were from small boutiques shopping to fill their own shelves, others had no “real” shelves to fill – they represented large catalogs and internet shopping sites – and still others had miles of shelves to fill in chain stores across the country.
“You meet a broad diversity of buyers when you attend trade shows,” said Elitza Barzakova, the Trade Hub’s business linkages advisor, based in New York City. “They are key to successfully exporting to international markets. These connections are literally money in your pocket.”
So who is a typical handcrafts buyer and what is she or he looking for in 2010? The answers vary, but fortunately, buyers do have some similarities, Barzakova offered.
“They are all looking for something that’s going to sell,” she said. “But the difficulty is, sell to who? There are different market segments. One product might be absolute gold to one buyer, but really not be of any interest to another.”
West African companies sold more than US$30,000 in products in on-the-spot sales at NYIGF.
and President of World Craft & Cafe, whose retail store, Pangea, sells home décor and fashion accessories in Washington, D.C. “When my customers see something new, it moves fast. They want simplicity right now, not sophisticated.
“One thing I had noticed is people are also looking for more vibrant – not shiny, but vibrant color – and those are the colors that are moving faster.”
In 2009, Pangea worked with the Trade Hub to develop a way to consolidate shipments of home décor and fashion accessories items, drastically improving shipping logistics. Consolidation lowers shipping costs, and allows Pangea to pass on the value to their customers.
Leslie Mittelberg, owner and founder of Swahili Imports, saw her customers looking for something different.
“People want items that are very plain and simple, that’s what we are finding,” Mittelberg said from Dakar, where she was visiting artisans and markets. “Things that are just white have been very popular.
“In the past we were definitely into the brown and earth tones, Native American patterns like you’d see in a basket. Now I’m finding clean lines. I don’t know what that says about our economy or public.”
Getting products that are going to sell is not an easy job, Shrestha said.
“Buyers not only need to keep up to date with the current market trends and know their customer base to present new products, but they also need to understand who is producing these handmade goods, how long it takes to get them and how good the quality is, among other things,” he said. “This challenge holds true for small to large scale buyers.”
The recessions in major world economies not only affected consumers’ pocketbooks but their tastes as well. Unsurprisingly, they are looking for inexpensive items.
“Lower price points are critical,” Mittelberg said. “With the American economy taking that crash, people are just more conscientious about how they spend their disposable income.”
At the same time, people want something different and interesting, Shrestha said.
“When people see something new, it moves fast,” he said.
Good design, then, is critical, and high-quality workmanship is important.
“The quality and design of the products available from AfricaNow! continues to improve,” said Tim Kunin, CEO of The Greater Good Network. “Having a single place to shop for products from all over Africa is a great help. Designing beautiful products with great organizations from all over the world is what makes this job so special.”
New and interesting products are important for retailers and wholesalers, Shrestha said. For retailers, new products attract and maintain the interest of customers.
“As long as you can maintain an interest level of your customers by presenting new products and new designs frequently, your sales remain steady,” he said. “For wholesalers, it is not easy for buyers to digest thousands of handmade products from hundreds of groups in two to three days. So if you are selling to the buyers through the gift shows, you want to always bring some new products in your booth.”
Buying is an art, not a science. To succeed, buyers must keep abreast of current market trends and know their customers. They should also know the artisans producing the goods, experts said.
“Sometimes what you think could be the best seller may become the least seller and what you think could be the least seller becomes the best seller,” he said. “So there is no exact formula you can use for buying.”
Buyers’ work can make or break a company, Mittelberg said.
“It’s a huge responsibility,” she said. “That’s what your company is about – selling products. To be successful obviously we have to buy and we have to buy well – or the company won’t profit.”
Finding and developing great products is key and Mittelberg has traveled to West Africa for over a decade do exactly that. The Trade Hub helps buyers organize visits to the region, connecting them to hundreds of potential producers and doing everything to make a visit successful – from finding accommodation to traveling to translating.
“A trip is a little hectic but it’s very productive,” she said. “You get a lot done. It helps me develop a whole product line.”
Mittelberg spends about two weeks in each country when she visits the region.
“To have any kind of long-term buying, you need a relationship with the artisan,” she said. “You see them in their workshops and you learn about what they deal with every day, what their constraints are. You also can be designing with them.
“To me it’s all about design and refreshing a product,” she continued. “That’s what my customers want. If you don’t do a buyer trip, then you’ll just see the same items.”
Communication between artisans and buyers is essential – poor communication is often the root cause of sour buyer-producer relationships, she said.
“Communication is a really big thing,” she said. “If it isn’t going well, tell me. Waiting until the ship date to tell me an order has not been finished is not a good idea. Producers should communicate weekly about orders.”
Maintaining high quality and delivering on time were also important to building business, she added.
Recession or not, people want to buy the exquisite and authentic handmade objects from West Africa, said the Trade Hub Home Décor & Fashion Accessories Advisor Elaine Bellezza.
Bellezza works with artisans across the region to develop new products.
“Producers in West Africa would be wrong to think that a recession means no one is buying,” she said. “People should not forget that buyers still have to fill shelves.”
At the recent trade shows they were doing exactly that.
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