A Moroccan cooperative of artisans, The Anou, recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of Moroccan artists’ struggle to sell their work internationally.
The Pet Lobby Campaign consists of offering people the possibility to commission comical paintings of their pets, “to bring attention to the fact that the Ministry of Culture restricts many artists in Morocco from successfully exporting their work.”
Co-founder and the Cooperative President, Brahim El Mansouri, told Hespress EN that “the issue The Anou is trying to highlight is that custom regulation and costs prevent the featured artist of this campaign, Nouredine, from exporting his work and earning a decent living.”
These restrictions have been exacerbated by the now two-year-long pandemic, as “Nourdine has lost most of his income as no tourists visit his shop,” explained El Mansouri.
Nouredine is not alone in his struggles. Despite The Anou’s success as a unique and efficient sales platform for Moroccan artisans, their mission grows increasingly complicated as they gather more artisans under their banner while export regulation for small businesses in Morocco remains unchanged.
Digitizing Moroccan craftsmen and craft women’s businesses is one of The Anou’s primary goals, and can be the solution to the 24month long stint their craft has suffered as a result of COVID-19. But the cooperative is constantly faced with difficult administrative norms and high customs taxes when trying to export its artisans’ work.
“Our goal with this campaign is to bring as much attention to this issue as possible, and hopefully raise enough awareness so that the Minister of Culture will meet with Anou’s artisan team to work out solutions for the benefit of all craftsmen in Morocco,” says Anou president.
As of this date, The Anou has made $3,000 USD (30,000 MAD) in portrait sales for its Pet Lobby campaign and is expecting more to come.
The Anou represents what the future of handicrafts careers can look like in Morocco if the government was to follow suit with their legitimate concerns and support their promising business model.
As Morocco’s only artisan-owned and artisan-managed e-commerce platform, the cooperative can offer an achievable and scalable solution to the exploitation that artisans face on the market, as artisans within The Anou get to keep 100% of their final chosen selling price.
The cooperative has helped many artisans in the country’s most remote areas to digitize their work while teaching them about sales and marketing and offering training sessions in languages, photography, and social media use.
As the Moroccan government scrambles to find innovative and creative solutions to help workers of this important sector of the Moroccan economy, The Anou has been a lever for many of them already, with little to no governmental assistance.
add your comment
Terms of publication : Not to offend the writer, people, sacred things, or attack religions or the divine self, and refrain from racist incitement and insults.