AGOA

The African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA)......Please give me an excedrin.

The past two days at work, I have been researching the trade agreement between the United States and Africa. When we get the wholesale line moving, we will be mainly importing products from Kenya and Thailand. It is crucial and necessary to review all trade agreements with the countries you will be importing from. Kenya, which is in Africa, is part of the AGOA.

The AGOA was signed into law on May 18, 2000 as Title 1 of The Trade and Development Act of 2000. The Act offers tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets. The AGOA issues duty-free treatment under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for specific articles from sub-Saharan African countries that would typically be prohibited from GSP provisions.

Specific textile and apparel articles are eligible to be duty-free, quantity-free entry if they meet the AGOA's strict standards. In order to see if they are eligible, you have to categorize your product under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS). The HTS contains the tariff rates and statistical categories for all merchandise imported into the United States. It is based on the international Harmonized System, which is the global system of nomenclature that is used to describe most world trade goods.

This was taken directly from the AGOA website:

AGOA IV provides duty-free and quota-free treatment for eligible apparel articles made in qualifying sub-Saharan African countries through 2015. Qualifying articles include:

• Apparel made of U.S. yarns and fabrics;
• Apparel made of sub-Saharan African (regional) yarns and fabrics, subject to a cap until 2015;
• Apparel made in a designated lesser developed country of third-country yarns and fabrics, subject to a cap until 2012;
• Apparel made of yarns and fabrics not produced in commercial quantities in the United States;
• Certain cashmere and merino wool sweaters;
• Eligible handloomed, handmade, or folklore articles and ethnic printed fabrics; and
• Textiles and textile articles produced entirely in a lesser-developed beneficiary country.
  
  

We will be importing other products besides apparel for the wholesale line, but this gives you an idea of some of the rules. The picture below is an example of a product categorized on the HTS. Hopefully as I move forward this will become less complex, at least I'm crossing my fingers.

Oouiiii...CUSTOMS

Never have I dealt with customs or had any inkling as to what chaos they can provoke, however today I had that privilege. Anne, Co-Founder of The Village Experience, had recently been working with an organization called The Bombolulu Workshop (www.bombolulu.org).

The Bombolulu Workshop for the Handicapped, located in Mombasa, Kenya, works with some 150 disabled men and women artisans to help them overcome their physical limitations and empower them economically and socially to become fully integrated members of their communities. Bombolulu started in 1969 as a rehabilitation project sponsored by the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya.

In working with Bombolulu, Anne had helped them design and produce summer dresses, beach totes, summer hats, and bowls. The products were scheduled to arrive to the store before the party on Saturday. Fortunately, Anne had received a call from Tom who said the products had arrived to the US, but were being held by customs. Tom is basically a liaison between TVE and customs. FYI, it's just better to hire someone to deal with the customs then to try and do it yourself. The products are being held by customs because The Bombolulu Workshop failed to sew in the care label in each of the summer hats and beach totes. Apparently, all textile products that are imported into the US need to have a care label. Therefore, in order for TVE to receive the products we had to figure out a way to get a care label that could be sewn into the products.

So, we researched and contacted numerous companies that may correlate or relate to care labels, apparel tags, screen printing, pad printing, alternations, or fabric. After all our research and contacts we ended up with no possible way to buy a care label. Ending up with nothing, we decided we needed to be more creative. It appeared as if we were actually going to have to make our own label since there are no companies in greater Indianapolis that had the resources to do so (FYI--business opportunity in apparel care labels!).

Our idea: buy heat transfer paper and white fabric. In Microsoft Word, Molly created a set of care labels that we printed onto the heat transfer paper, which were then ironed onto the fabric. We then cut the labels out, which will be sewn into the products tomorrow morning at 8am. In order to gain access to the products that are being held by customs, Anne had to photocopy and send all of our passports to them. Before our arrival, customs will have inspected our passports and have run a background check on each of us. Who knew working with customs would be so difficult?



To sum it up, we had to actually create our own care label that will be sewn into the products tomorrow morning in front of the customs officials. If all goes well we should be able to bring the products back to TVE to be set up and merchandised. All I can say is..... ouiiiii vayyyyy customs!!!