To make sure our jewelry is being made to the highest standards, in the right colors, and in fair-wage working environments, we traveled to Africa to visit our suppliers in Ghana and Uganda.

Landing in the Accra airport was like coming home. Gone were the butterflies and trepidation we felt when arriving for the first time in 2013.

This time, we knew the drill:

1. Stand close to the door of the bus from the plane; get off quickly to be near the front of the immigration line.
2. Wave our proof of yellow fever vaccinations in front of the Health Officer.
3. Proceed slowly in the queue to get our passports stamped.
4. Show our Resident Permits.
5. Stamp, stamp. Stamp, stamp. Stamp, stamp.

Tony, our favorite driver, greeted us with a smile, and took us to 5A, our old apartment. Continue reading →

Sorry for the lapse in blog posts!  In the last few months we’ve been “crazy busy” in a good way. We’ve been working in Santiago and have been on the road.

As part of our effort to understand customer needs and wants, we took a three-week trip to the US in late May/early June.  We visited Stanford, Harvard, University of Texas, Texas A&M, and Baylor and interviewed potential customers to find out their views about our RahRah4Good jewelry.

As much as this might sound like a boondoggle, it was real work!  We were constantly showing our jewelry and soliciting feedback. Continue reading →

Slowly but surely, we are making progress on our social enterprise, RahRah4Good.

Our accomplishments to date include:

• Analyzed market size and segmentation. (We are MBAs, after all!) Sport fan apparel and accessories is a $20B per year global market, 75% in the US and mostly involving university teams. We also have looked at the established fan jewelry products. We analyzed the relative size of team fan bases and also gained an understanding of the range of team colors and color combinations.

• Researched numerous jewelry designs with the Startup Chile entrepreneurs.  It was interesting to note the difference in preferences across demographics.  We narrowed our offerings based on the feedback.

• Identified five jewelry workshops in Uganda and Ghana as potential sourcing partners. This has involved a lot of emails, Skype chats and video conferences. All these producers employ local women to make jewelry, seem capable of scaling production and are anxious to export.

• Selected the test markets for our original production runs. We’ve looked at the sizes of the fan bases and assortment of color schemes of various universities in the US, and have selected four colleges — Stanford, Harvard, University of Texas and Texas A&M as our test markets. (Distribution contacts for any of these universities are welcome!)

• Specified the details for the samples to be produced by the African sources. This has included a lot of photos and bead-by-bead specifications to insure uniformity. We’ve put in orders for samples with all the workshops and expect delivery any day. Part of what we are trying to figure out is a style of communication that makes commitments clear.

• Planned a trip to the four US universities to show samples and refine potential distribution strategies. We’re scheduled to travel April 22 – May 11. At present we are planning marketing tests at 3-4 US campuses in the fall involving college bookstores, social media/ecommerce and partnerships with on-campus organizations.

Continue reading →