FairPrice Furniture and Cathy Alex of the social enterprise, “Hauslain Souvenirs”, have created a partnership to help over 500 bilum weavers.
The partnership was formed to help the weavers of remote Mt Bosavi in Southern Highlands sell their bilums in the lead up to Mother’s Day, which will fall on May 9th.
Alex finds a market space for the weavers so that their bilums can be sold however, due to the COVID-19 restrictions, her usual retailers were closed.
“I couldn’t rent shelves to sell the bilums. The bilums that used to sell very quickly sat there for 6 months,” she stated.
Alex met the FairPrice team through her membership of the Young Professionals Network (YPN) of PNG and struck a deal to merchandise the backlog of stock.
“We came to a mutually beneficial commercial arrangement with Cathy and her Bosavi weavers,” said Diana Laho, showroom supervisor at FairPrice.
“All local businesses like us are facing challenging times so we are happy we could work together. Our FairPrice customers liked this variety of product on offer and that was the most important thing for us.”
The Bosavi Bilums are now on sale at the FairPrice Showroom located upstairs at Courts building, Gordon’s, Port Moresby.
(Cathy Alex with the Bosavi bilums at FairPrice)