Half million Rand for Cape crafters

CCDI staff member Ashanti Zweda

"Participating in the 2010 FIFA World Cup activities was a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime experience for over 200 craft producers in the city and surrounds," said Cape Craft and Design Institute executive director Erica Elk.

Some 137 producers rented individual stands at the FanFest and FanWalk on a rotational basis, 149 were represented through the collective shop, while 19 took stands along the FanWalk. The Memories of Africa, Handmade in the Cape craft village at the Grand Parade was organised by the Cape Craft and Design Institute, at the request of the City of Cape Town.

In addition, 82 craft producers showcased the best of handmade Western Cape craft and design flair at the Cape Creative Exhibition in Green Point, while another six craft producers and designers were selected to produce large-scale street sculptures for the FanWalk. These will remain at St Andrew's Square in the Prestwich Memorial precinct.

'Fantastic exposure'

"It provided fantastic exposure to an international audience and was a great opportunity for us to promote our creativity, ingenuity and sense of humour to a very appreciative audience," adds Elk. "The visitors were mostly soccer tourists interested in the game but they loved our products, were amazed at the range of materials and products and appreciated the quality. It's given us a fantastic base to continue to market our products around the world."

Elk said that the best sellers were the smaller soccer-inspired items in team or country colours, while the most popular (at least until Bafana left the tournament) were items with the South African flag. Tourists also bought craft products as gifts and mementoes of Cape Town.

"The large-scale street sculptures were also a hit with FanWalk visitors and were photographed a lot," said Elk. "The Handmade Exhibition Collection, which ran daily at 37 Main Road Green Point until 18 July, got rave reviews from foreigners and locals."

Learning from the event

She said that some craft enterprises had done extremely well during the tournament, while others had been less successful, due to factors such as product inappropriateness. "We do however try to review this with craft producers so they are at least able to take lessons and value away from the experience."

One craft enterprise which has notched up excellent orders is Streetwires, which not only sold numerous wire and bead products to visitors, but also completed a massive order of 1250 intricately beaded soccer boot replicas for a leading soccer boot brand. This involved making countless soccer boot samples to ensure that the company passed the strict quality control audit.

All this hard work paid off with the delivery of a high quality order on time, boosted morale, an order for even more boots, and a surprise gift from the customer of four VIP box tickets for a soccer game. Streetwires held a lucky draw to allocate the tickets to their bead and wire artists.