SEVENTEEN artisans have been attending business and marketing training under the OAS Craft Enhancement Project of the Ministry of Tourism Heritage and the Creative Industries, facilitated by the Cultural Development Foundationās Director of Business Development and Marketing, Finola Jennings-Clark.
This is a key element of a year long project to develop the capacity of crafts artisans in Saint Lucia: Previously artisans undertook a two-week course focused on creating authentically Saint Lucian designs and developing products to suit customer needs.
This phase of training takes artisans through a series of interactive sessions including costing and pricing; developing a customer value proposition; creating and using market research tools; understanding developing a brand; effective simple product photography; social media promotion and selling
Participants have been encouraged to engage in lively discussions on the challenges they face, sharing advice and working with each other to come up with practical solutions.
The final phase of the training will be further development of products in response to the market research and an expose at the end of October where further market research will be done with targeted audiences. This will be followed by one last session to review implications of implementing changes to products in response to customer feedback and to prepare for the 2015-16 āHigh Seasonā.
The Project includes the creation of an online resource for artisans that will contain training materials; resource contacts; artisan contacts. This will be supported by an online catalogue of participantsā work with links to their own online sites.