A Story of Selling: Bilum in the Marketplace

Village women often work with a middleman (or in some cases a middlewoman) to take their bags to Port Moresby, which is the only port of call for foreign cruise ships.

Some bilum makers live in the slums surrounding Port Moresby, but the proximity to popular markets – and to foreign buyers – doesn’t translate to increased profits.

The more people involved in the sale, however, the less money bilum makers earn for their bags.

A single bag can take two to three weeks to make, and women who sell the bags themselves in Port Moresby find a challenging road both literally and figuratively. Public transportation is nonexistent here, and the privately-run bus services are unreliable at best and dangerous at worst.

Women who bring their own wares to the Port Moresby markets must carry their inventory there and home again each day. For a time, some used a nearby warehouse to store their unsold bags until the next morning. But when the warehouse burned down, they had no other options and began hauling their bilum back and forth again.

While they can earn money selling their bags, bilum weaving isn’t a lucrative means of generating income, at least as it stands today.

Between the brokers and the sale of synthetic bilum, reaching tourists with their handcrafted goods is challenging. And the amount of time spent traveling to the market detracts from their profits as well.

When a consumer buys one bilum bag, they can feed 14-15 people with that single purchase. But how customers buy bilum products, and from whom, matters a great deal.

Today, Gilda strives to broker sales of locally-made bilum to foreign consumers so that the women with whom she works can earn more from their craft and gain a greater sense of personal agency and financial autonomy.

Gilda arranges sales via email or through platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Bilum weavers are unlikely to have business cards, let alone digital storefronts for their goods, especially because internet is expensive and unreliable in Papua New Guinea.

Brokers and sellers in Australia, on the other hand, are quick to produce business cards and to share information about their websites, making it far easier for them to get in front of international buyers.

Such online platforms can help bridge the gap between local artisans and broader markets, giving them greater control over how their bags are sold and a greater take-home profit.

Women may weave the bilum bags, but all Papua New Guineans recognize the craft’s value to the country’s past and future. As Willy, one young male entrepreneur, said during the hackathon, “Bilum is the backbone of Papua New Guinea.”