Information officer for The Dominica Export Import Agency (DEXIA), Ayeole George, has said that the second edition of the Strictly Local Christmas Village was a resounding success.
The event featured a number of local vendors selling a wide variety of locally made products and included a health and wellness section, craft, paintings and manufactured products.
The activity began on Wednesday, 18th December 2019 and ended on December 20th 2019.
George said overall, DEXIA received positive feedback as most vendors had great sales and many of them are willing to come back next year.
According to George, although some vendors’ items were sold out and even went out of stock, others did not have that same outcome.
“There were others who did not do as well but it could have just been a matter of persons’ preferences at this particular juncture in terms of what items they wanted to buy for themselves, for their families. As you know, we are promoting as an event where persons can come and purchase gifts for the holiday season.”
However, she stated that DEXIA did meet their goal of impacting the bottom line of producers and giving participants the opportunity of ending the year on a good note, financially.
George said some people have asked for this event to be hosted around carnival time to engage with the diaspora and also around Easter but for now, it will be held during December.
She added that the entertainment items such as live paintings, poetry and the fashion show were a hit.
One of the participants, Kervin Vidal and owner of K. Vidal Enterprise, told DNO at the opening of Strictly Local Christmas Village said his business has been in operation for over a decade providing confectionery products such as coconut cheese, tablet, loga and tamarind balls.
Unfortunately, after his business was damaged as a result of Hurricane Maria, George said he decided to venture out into new areas such as green seasoning and local liquor.
“Right now we have a product on the supermarket shelf all around the island- KV Green seasoning,” he revealed. “We are looking at adding new products to our product line and one of them we recently added, was sorrel liquor because we are into not just agro-processing but we are also planting our crops.”
George said the response from the general public has been good thus far.
At the event, General Manager at DEXIA, Gregoire Thomas announced that as tourism in Dominica is rapidly growing, DEXIA is anticipating an injection of $US300, 000 within the craft sector.
He said this will be done through a “competitive bid” by presenting this proposal to a pile of investment judges from the Inter American Development Bank (IADB).
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