No sales for Kingston Craft Market vendors

October 15, 2025
Kingston Craft Market
Kingston Craft Market
File photo shows a market vendor displaying her items.
File photo shows a market vendor displaying her items.
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At Kingston Craft Market, the colours are bright but business is dull.

Rows of hand-carved figures, bamboo cups and beaded jewellery sit waiting, yet few tourists pass through to see them. Opened in the 1980s as a showcase for Jamaica's artisans, the waterfront market was built to give craft producers a central hub to sell their work directly to visitors. Back then, bus loads of tourists poured in from cruise ships docked nearby, turning the space into one of downtown Kingston's liveliest attractions. Today, the traffic has slowed to a trickle.

"They say they want locally made, but it's really clothing now," said Richard Hinds, who has sold crafts at the market for more than a decade. "The modern shelf items, bamboo cups, bottles, new designs, those sell more than the carvings or plaques. People want to see the modern side of Jamaican craft."

Hinds believes the real problem is not style but exposure.

"The market itself is not marketed," he told THE STAR. "We used to make things happen, but we're not on the map any more. Kingston tours don't include us. Only the old-school visitors come now. I market my own shop, but that's just one business. The market itself needs promotion."

The facility houses more than 100 small shops, each stacked with colour and character. Yet on most days, vendors return home without making a single sale.

"We don't get tourists, we don't get sales," one woman said, adjusting souvenirs that had sat untouched all morning. "Every day it's the same thing: take up, put down, take up, put down. It makes no sense to run a business that's not making profit."

Outside, rainwater pools near the entrance. Vendors have built a makeshift bridge from old wooden pallets so shoppers can cross when it floods.

"We deal with all these internal issues plus the lack of recognition," another vendor said. "Marketing is important, especially in the craft industry. If people don't know about us, how will they find us?"

Several sellers said the loss of cruise ship traffic has been devastating.

"They promised to fix the pier," one woman remarked. "If the cruise ships came back, it would bring life here again. Sometimes a ship docks in Port Royal, maybe two buses of visitors come, mostly elderly people. The most you get from them is their eyesight - they just look." Others worry about speaking out, fearful of being reprimanded.

"This should have been a national treasure," a vendor said quietly. "But if we talk too loud, we fear they'll padlock the shop. People are scared to speak up because they're ready to close you down the minute you say anything."

Despite the hardship, many still hold pride in what they make.

"Channel the people to the product, not the product to the people," Hinds said. "We pay our licence every year. The Government should help the craftsmen, give them materials, promote what we make. We just want to keep the craft alive."

Across the Caribbean, travellers are demanding more authentic, locally made products and cultural experiences. But for many artisans, that desire has not translated into sales. Lenna Cunningham, who has sold at the market for 21 years, believes tourists genuinely want to see the "real Jamaica" but are often kept within resort walls.

"This is what they should see - the art, the people, the stories. It's Heritage Week, and once upon a time we sold bandanas like crazy. Now, look around, you can count how many people you see in here," she said.

Tourism remains Jamaica's biggest foreign exchange earner, contributing roughly nine per cent to GDP and generating more than US$4 billion (approximately J$637 billion) annually. Yet vendors at Kingston Craft Market say very little of that revenue ever trickles down to them.

"It's like the money pass we and go somewhere else," one vendor said. "We part of tourism too, but we not feeling it."

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