The Guidebook

Second only to agriculture in terms of employment, the handicraft sector in Tunisia is essential for income distribution and job growth across socio-economic levels, in particular with respect to women, who constitute 80% of the handicraft sector. It is also a significant vector political and social stability as it employs many less educated people who live in remote areas and whose options would otherwise be limited. When speaking about development, experts tend to focus on agriculture rather than artisan sector. It is true that both are powerful as pathways out of poverty for millions of households. However, while agriculture is the single largest employer in the developing world, the artisan sector is the second (including in Tunisia).

Most people still do not understand the full economic value of the sector. They do not think of artisan businesses as real industries — or as drivers of economic development and job creation. They tend to associate it with tourist trinkets, when in a place like Tunisia, only 6.5% of the handicraft production is absorbed by tourists. However, the artisan sector is part of a much larger global creative economy that, if it were a country, would already be equal to the fourth-largest economy in the world, with the fourth-largest workforce, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

When the 2008 global financial crisis drove markets down, demand for artisan products kept growing — doubling in value from just six years before. Today, it’s an estimated $40 billion a year industry. The numbers show impressive growth, but serious roadblocks remain that make it difficult for artisans to take full advantage of the unprecedented demand for their products. For instance, most artisan enterprises are small and undercapitalized, and they suffer from limited access to financial services, such as credit. Highly seasonal sales, relatively illiquid inventories and ephemeral consumer preferences result in unpredictable cash flows, impeding their ability to plan for and invest in the future. Here, there are compelling opportunities to help artisans gain the business skills and technical knowledge they need to sustain and grow their operations. Artisan entrepreneurs are also challenged by an inability to tap into established supply chains. With potential buyers an ocean away, their success is limited by the lack of contacts, informal and unstructured markets in which intermediaries operate with few, if any, contractual standards and what complex permitting, shipping and customs procedures.

In late April 2018, produced the first Handicraft Export Guide which aims to facilitate the export of Tunisian handicrafts to the U.S. The guide focuses on the technical aspects of handicraft export, including meeting the expectations of the U.S. market, contractual agreements, export standards, shipping, and payment techniques. A copy of the French-language guidebook is available on this site in PDF.