Cuba launches first online store for Cuban consumers

A new online store has launched in Cuba, conceived as a showcase of ‘Made in Cuba’ products especially for the Cuban consumer, with items including t-shirts, jewellery, leather accessories and handmade soaps.

Called Bulevar Cubano, the platform founded by Yunier Soler, Yoslandy Lopez and Gerardo Rodríguez is the first of its kind on the island, where internet access started to improve in 2015 and now boasts of 4.5 million users.

Over the last two years, Cuba has opened over 500 public Wi-Fi hotspots. “Bulevar Cubano aims to operate as an online store for the Cuban market, where most people have no way of making online payments,” says Rodriguez, 31, to Efe.

Due to the embargo between the United States and Cuba, platforms enabling online payments such as PayPal are banned here, so Bulevar Cubano offers customers the option to reserve products online and pay for them upon delivery.

“It’s basically a new sales channel for entrepreneurs who are producers of some kind of Cuban made product… This is another example of how the private sector is trying to cover services that are common in other countries and that barely exist here,” adds Rodriguez.

Global platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Asos and Zalando are not available in Cuba.

According to its founders, Bulevar Cubano will allow businesses to showcase their products and services for free in the online store, taking away the need to invest in their own online sites.

The number of self-employed people has been growing steadily since 2010, with now more than half a million freelancers registered in Cuba. Sandra Borges, who launched her jewellery and accessories brand SBorges Design in September, is one of the first businesses to join Bulevar Cubano.

“It’s all very new. Bulevar Cubano is just starting out and we are currently very few creators on the platform. But I think it will grow a lot,” she said.

If the platform continues to grow and the island continues to open itself to the digital world, “maybe one day we will have online stores like the rest of the world,” says Borges.

Efe with Barbara Santamaria