Buy Jamaican, Build Jamaica: The Heroes Edition
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Editorial Team
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Tomorrow, October 19, is National Heroes Day. And it is worth asking, before the ceremonies begin: what does it actually mean to honour the people we honour tomorrow?
The answer most people give is the public one. Attend the wreath-laying. Watch the parade. Read a post. Acknowledge that the men and women we call national heroes gave everything they had to a cause larger than themselves, and that we are the inheritors of what they built. That acknowledgement matters. But it is incomplete if it stays at the level of ceremony.
Here is what the heroes were actually fighting for. Not just freedom in the abstract. Capacity. The capacity for Jamaica to govern itself. To make its own economic decisions. To build something lasting and indigenous, rooted in who we are. They were not fighting for the right to import everything we consume from somewhere else. They were fighting for the foundation to create.
The most direct, daily way to honour that legacy is not a ceremony. It is a decision. It is choosing, in the ordinary transaction of buying something, to support what Jamaicans are building here. That is not a small thing dressed up in patriotic language. That is the actual work of the legacy.
Four Brands. One Argument.
The B2B: Buy To Build: A Made In Jamaica Christmas campaign launched October 1 and runs through December 31, 2026 on the Things Jamaican platform. Four Jamaican brands are on it. The name of the campaign says exactly what it means. Buy to build. The act of buying, an ordinary daily decision, is also an act of building when the money stays home. An economy that supports its own makers. A creative sector with a market. A craft tradition with a future.
On the eve of Heroes Day, that connection between the ordinary and the consequential deserves to be felt, not just stated. So here is what four Jamaican entrepreneurs have built, and why it matters.
Wicks by Grey: Building With Intention
Think about what it takes to build a candle brand in Jamaica from nothing. To research non-toxic soy formulations when the easy option is cheaper wax. To name your products for qualities instead of fragrances because you believe the name should carry meaning. To hand-pour every single jar because the process is part of the product. Wicks by Grey did all of that. The Confidence Candle ($28) exists because someone decided her customers deserved better than what was already on the shelf. The Assorted Aromatherapy Bundle ($50, down from $60) exists because she believed a curated set reflected more care than a single item. The 8oz Ginger Cookie Candle ($30) exists because she knew the season ahead called for something warm and specific. Every product on the Wicks by Grey shelf is a decision made by a Jamaican entrepreneur who chose to build something excellent. That is the spirit of the heroes applied to the daily work of running a business.
Wicks by Grey – Assorted Aromatherapy Bundle
Original price was: $60.00.$50.00Current price is: $50.00.
Scents by St. Clair: Building With Voice
Scents by St. Clair is Kingston home fragrance with a brand voice drawn entirely from Jamaican culture. Not tourist-facing. Not vaguely Caribbean. Specifically, unapologetically Jamaican. Hol’ A Medz ($22) is named for the instruction to slow down and breathe. Skankin Sweet ($22) is named for pure enjoyment, the kind that needs no translation for anyone from this island. The Tropical Citrus Delight Wax Melt ($18) and Tease Wax Melt ($18) carry the same energy in a flame-free format. The Reed Diffuser ($40) works quietly and continuously, making every room it inhabits smell considered. The Self Care Bundle ($85, down from $90) is everything Scents by St. Clair does in one gift, for the person who gives the most and should receive something that matches. This is what self-determination looks like in a product: a Jamaican maker deciding that the Jamaican market deserved world-class home fragrance made here, for us. They were right.
Frazer’s Ceramics: Building With Permanence
Master potter Headley Frazer has spent decades doing something that most makers never attempt: developing an aesthetic so rooted in Caribbean imagery that his work could not have come from anywhere else. His ceramics do not imitate. They originate. The Mini Vases (from $19) are handmade and individually distinct, accessible in price without any compromise on quality. The Breadfruit Cup ($32.84) carries Jamaica’s most enduring cultural symbol on its surface: a fruit that fed this island for centuries, pressed into clay by someone who understands what it means and fired into something you use every morning. The Coronation Market Set ($154) tells a story of Jamaican market life in three handcrafted pieces, with the kind of warmth and specificity that only comes from someone who has actually lived it. This is heritage being made right now. Not preserved behind glass. Made, sold, and placed in homes.
Depablo Art and Craft: Building With Memory
Depablo Art and Craft makes handmade figurines that do something deceptively simple: they preserve Jamaican identity in permanent form. The Suck Finger Pickney Figurine ($47) is a handmade piece of pure Jamaican childhood, the uninhibited joy of something delicious, the expressiveness of a child who has not yet learned to contain their delight. Anyone with a connection to this island will feel it before they have finished looking at it. But here is what makes it more than a decorative object: it is an act of documentation. A Jamaican artist decided that this face, this moment, this specific expression of Jamaican joy, was worth making permanent. That is preservation work. That is the kind of legacy-building that Heroes Day was made to celebrate.
The Real Work of Honouring the Heroes
The ceremony tomorrow will be over by midday. The speeches will end and the wreaths will be laid. And then the real work of honouring the heroes continues the way it always has: in the daily decisions of Jamaicans about how to live in the country they built.
Those decisions include where you spend your money. They include whether you look for the Jamaican-made option when it exists. They include whether you support the craftspeople and entrepreneurs who are building something here, with everything that building here requires, because they believe it is worth doing.
The connection between Heroes Day and the B2B campaign is not a marketing angle. It is a real one. When you shop through Things Jamaican this week, you are participating in exactly the kind of creative and economic self-determination the heroes spent their lives trying to make possible.
Shop online at thingsjamaicanshopping.com or visit us in person at Norman Manley International Airport, Devon House, or 14 Camp Road, Kingston.
