Virtual business gives Sanikiluaq world-wide exposure

MONTREAL — A new business whose only office consists of a site on the World Wide Web plans to bring Sanikiluaq’s art work one step closer to the global marketplace.

This week, a company called the “Soapstone Artists of Sanikiluaq” officially launched a virtual showroom on the Internet to display the carvings and basket work that the Belcher Islands are noted for.

“Now you can be transported to our world of island life and virtually tour a remote area in Canada’s newest territory that most never see,” says the sales pitch for the web site at www.soapstoneartists.com.

“See full color images of a wide range of our carvings and baskets. Learn about our carvers and their way of life. Find out what makes soapstone carvings valuable and sought after by collectors world wide and how best to take care of them. Shop online in our virtual store from our continually changing inventory of carvings.”

Bob McLean, a former co-op manager, runs the new venture with his wife, Sarah Meeko, whose extended family includes many local carvers.

The notion that the web might be the best place to do business from Sanikiluaq came out of the many requests that McLean was already handling over the Internet for local arts and crafts.

“I work at the airport and pilots would always ask me for carvings,” McLean said. “I would even get orders by e-mail, and I finally started up a web site with photos. It progessed from that.”

But McLean said increasing numbers of clients wanted to buy and receive their art more quickly, without having to wait for a check to arrive through the mail and pass through the bank.

He finally asked Nunavut’s Dept. of Sustainable Development for financial assistance to transform his modest, home-made web page into a real e-commerce site. The new site features a system that can accept credit card purchases and keep this financial information confidential. It also calculates currency exchange.

Since the site was completed a couple of months ago, McLean has been registering it with the major search engines that furnish information on the Internet.

“Now, I’m beginning to get requests,” McLean said.

He’s already received inquiries from Australia, South Korea and Germany.

When a client makes an order for a particular kind of carving or for a work from a specific carver, Sarah Meeko contacts the carver.

“I go to the carvers and tell them to do a carving,” she said. “And they don’t mind, because they’re being paid.”

One grateful client wrote the company an e-mail after she received her order.

“I received the baby shaman sculpture in the mail this week and it arrived safely — what a delightful carving, ” she wrote.

The list prices for carvings and baskets featured on the site are lower than retail prices in the South, but still allow local carvers to receive normal payment for their work.

Sanikiluaq’s carvings are still well known for their graceful portrayals of birds and sea mammals that sustained the islands’ residents for generations.

Before Christmas 1999, Sanikiluaq carvers received an order for 1800 carvings from the Swedish furniture chain IKEA, which were given to its Canadian employees.

But, overall, the 150 men and women who regularly carve in Sanikiluaq have seen their sales drop drastically over the past decade.

“It’s hurt the community big-time, and filled the welfare rolls,” McLean said.

The new web site is also promoting the decorative baskets that women in Sanikiluaq traditionally wove to hold their household supplies. An Arctic College course recently revitalized this craft on the islands.

“But most people only know about these baskets if they have been here,” McLean said.

Sanikiluaq women also traditionally used eiderdown to make warm clothing, although their recent effort to market eiderdown quilts failed to find its market — a situation McLean intends to avoid.

“I’m hoping now that we’re on the Internet, we might change that,” McLean said.