LOCAL small business owners have expressed that they are encountering too many barriers when trying to capitalise on the international export market.

On Wednesday, which was the opening day of the 9th staging of the ‘Christmas in July’ trade show, a two-day event held at the AC Hotel Kingston, the Jamaica Observer spoke with a few of the participants who expressed that exporting has proved to be a challenging task.

“Exporting feels as though if you don’t know someone, it’s tough to get it done,” shared Carmen Hope-Thomas, CEO of Zipporah, a hair and skincare brand.

Hope-Thomas’s experience appeared to be the same for many of the 175 participants at the show. It was a challenge to find entrepreneurs who were actively exporting. Most of the local artisans, manufacturers and suppliers were either not interested in exporting because of the difficulties associated with the process, while others just never gave it a thought. Some shared that they weren’t ready to take on the export market while another set appeared to be waiting for the opportunity to fall into their hands. Sunday Finance learned that businesses that currently export their products have been successful only through determination.

Hope-Thomas told Sunday Finance that she underwent numerous trial and error phases before she was successful with her first export.

“I had to ship stuff. I had stuff shipped back to me at least twice, that’s a waste when you think about it, to ship it out and to send it back, and because it was packaged I had to pay duty on my own stuff! I mean it’s ridiculous. That’s what I mean, we don’t make it easy, we just don’t,” Hope-Thomas said in frustration.

She added that the COVID-19 pandemic propelled her into exporting. According to her, the hair and skincare products were just piling up inside warehouses. As a result, she turned to Amazon for help with exporting to the United States and Canada, which was also a time-consuming process to get approved for each country. She also began exploring export to other countries in the Caribbean but discovered that it was far more daunting and expensive than shipping to bigger nations.

“We got a call once from the Dominican Republic to send products. We were thinking that it was going to be easy, because you can almost see the Dominican Republic from here, but what happened was, the cost of shipping was astronomical, like it was cost prohibitive to do any business with the Dominican Republic. We lost that buyer,” she explained.

A similar situation almost occurred with a buyer in Trinidad and Tobago. In order to not lose that sale, she had to use a different approach, which caused significant delays in the products reaching the customer. “We shipped hair and skin products to them straight, via the mail and after two months, they received them. It is like nothing moves in Caricom the way you think it would move. Although there are incentives for us to do island to island shipping, it’s not easy. There’s nothing that makes the process easy. Right now, I have an order for Tortola [in British Virgin Islands] and I’m trying to figure out how to get it there. Tortola is not that far away from here and that is what I’m talking about,” said Hope-Thomas.

A different challenge is faced by those small businesses who export in small amounts. Without having bulk products or a supplier overseas, local artisans rely on their websites to get sales from individual buyers and exporting a single art piece can be expensive.

“I am shipping direct to customers so I’m not going by sea, I’m going by air, so I’m using vendors like FedEx and DHL, on the face of it the cost of shipping using those types of courier companies it’s scary. It starts at US$50 and goes up,” said Symerna Blake, creator of Antillean Charm.

“When I had just started shipping internationally I have actually had clients I’ve tried to discourage when they reach out to me from overseas, I’m like do you plan to come to Jamaica anytime soon, do you have anyone coming up that we could probably send with them. I thought that as soon as I told them the cost for shipping that they would say no, no I’m not going to pay that,” she added.

She explained, however, that the art pieces she sell is seen as a highly valuable collectible and clients are prepared to spend for it. Blake suggests to other artisans to give their customers the opportunity to decide whether or not they want to pay for the shipping costs. She believes the cost to send packages by air to countries outside frequent flyer zones will attract higher costs.

“As much as we are a growing economy and Jamaica is poised for greatness in terms of numbers, we just not there yet to justify the number of flights that would bring down the cost to something that you would be paying if you were shipping in mainland America,” Blake said.

Though the Jampro offers support through its Export Max programme, Blake explained that for an artist like herself it would not be suitable as the programme focuses on direct volumes rather than singular items.

Despite these hurdles, the focus at the trade show was on encouraging the businesses to tap into global markets.

“The JMEA is doing a wonderful job of developing our regional expansion in the Caribbean and grow export and investing outside of Jamaica. This is the type of things that we need for our business community to look outside of Jamaica” said John Mahfood, chairman of the manufacturing technical working group, tourism linkages council.

Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce Senator Aubyn Hill, who was also in attendance, repeated what he has been stressing for the past year, that improving exports is the way to grow the economy.

“We are second to last in per capita GDP [gross domestic product] in Caricom. That has to change. We have to export a lot more to get wealthy. We are handling our debt to GDP, we must now handle our export products to change this country into a wealthy country. We are no longer interested in being poor,” he said.

CEO of Seprod Group Richard Pandohie told participants that exporting relies on the ability of businesses to be scalable and sustainable, because with export comes a demand.

“One consistent cry is that we don’t supply consistently. I encourage all the businesses today as you go on, scale your business properly. The worst thing is not be able to supply,” said Pandohie.

Participants of the Christmas in July trade show varied in the categories of skin care and aromatherapy, décor, clothing, fine art, jewellery, souvenirs, foods and products created from organic and natural fibres.