Whirlwind US Research Trip

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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 →

Rah Rah For Progress!

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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.

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  • 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 →

Settling in Santiago

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Hola Blog Readers! Yes, you read it correctly. We are no longer in West Africa, but have moved to Santiago Chile. Quite a change, but it’s exciting.

Why Santiago? While in Ghana, we applied and were selected to be a part of the Startup>Chile business incubator. Our application (for our concept-stage social enterprise) was one of 1500 applications from around the world. 100 were selected.

Startup Chile is a Chilean government program designed to encourage and support entrepreneurship. The government gives each company a $40,000 grant to work on their business, as long as the entrepreneurs live in Chile for a six-month period. We are part of “Generation 9”; 800 other companies have participated in the program over the past three years.

Continue reading →

For This, We Are Grateful

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We are now back in San Francisco, after an amazing Ghanaian adventure. With emotional good-byes (preferably couched as “see you again…hopefully soon!), we enjoyed a rousing send-off at the Goodbye Celebration at the Stanford SEED Center on Friday night.

Jan’s client, IBK, flew in from Nigeria to honor the event. He brought along these magnificent outfits for us. We felt like Nigerian royalty!

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Ed’s client, Nwamaka, also flew in from Nigeria (to spend Tues – Fri with Ed), so she was on hand to tie Jan’s gele. Who knew that Jan could be so tall!

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African Literary Journey

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During the last six months in Ghana,  I’ve enjoyed reading books by African authors. It’s been a fascinating journey through both fiction and non-fiction.

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My initial foray into African literature this year was Ghana Must Go – a recent best seller by a Ghanaian/Nigerian author, Tayie Salasi. It’s a poetically written novel about a dysfunctional family across several generations and continents. I enjoyed this book, even though it took a while to get into it. And, I knew it had an impact on me, when I missed the characters after finishing the book. Continue reading →

Four Canoes in Four Days: Travels in Togo and Benin

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Over Thanksgiving, we took a break to visit rural villages and scenic beaches in Togo and Benin.  What a wonderful chance to see more of the countryside and practice our French (and Ewe!)

We traveled with James, an excellent and highly experienced Ghanaian driver, and Germaine, a Togolese French-speaking guide. The chaotic process of getting through immigration and customs to enter Togo, and later Benin, reflected positively on the fine customer service on typically gets in Miami when coming from Latin America.

James and Germaine

Shortly after we entered Togo we crossed a bridge over an estuary where a branch of the Volta meets the sea. The line where sea meets river was incredibly clear.

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Continue reading →

We Love Our Clients

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We love our clients! These entrepreneurs are hard working, intelligent, driven, and lots of fun. On a daily basis, they keep us on our toes. The road to transformation may be rocky, but it’s never dull! Typically they have achieved their current scale through bootstrapping. The interest rates are extremely high (30%) and equity capital is quite scarce. Recently, Jan made time to smell and sip the coffee at a coffee-roasting firm in Cote d’Ivoire. Although this company is Kweku’s client, Jan spent a day with them to discuss their packaging needs and future launch into grocery stores.

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The local coffee “barista” had interesting insight into the coffee brands and drinking patterns of the locals.

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Continue reading →

Nigerian Wedding Spectacle

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The groom-to-be told us, “Once you’ve experienced a Nigerian wedding, you’ll never be the same!”. We gladly report that he was correct.

The wedding of Jumoke and Gbolahan was a two-day extravaganza. On Thursday there was the traditional wedding/engagement ceremony for 600. On Saturday, the celebration continued with a church wedding (aka “the white wedding”) and a reception for over 1,000, complete with gifts for the guests!  We were so lucky to be able to experience this series of events. Apparently, the size and scope of this wedding celebration was not out of the norm for Nigeria, even though in our narrow experience, this was a spectacular sequence of events, as recorded by Ed in this gallery.

Traditional Wedding (or Engagement Ceremony)

The traditional wedding was held at Lagos City Hall. Our invitation said 12:00 pm. So, we rushed to arrive at 11:55 (in a rainstorm) only to find that the main hall was just getting set up. The beefy, armed bouncers looked at us warily. We didn’t look like typical invitees. They asked to see the invitation. We mentioned the groom’s first name, but they stared at us blankly. When we finally entered the room, we encountered a table full of ladies in blue headdresses (called “gele”) and gold gowns.  I showed them the groom’s name on my iPhone, and asked if we were in the right place. They beamed…. “YES,  YOU’RE WELCOME!”  So, we entered and took a seat at a table near them in the back of the room. Continue reading →

We Get Hit by a Scam Artist

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We all know the pitfalls of Nigerian scam artists who prey via email.  But now we know that there are other methods as well. We learned the hard way.

Yesterday, while riding in the car, I received a call on my Nigerian cell phone with a connection that wasn’t very good.  The speaker was clearly in a panic.  I probed, “Is this Majek?” … (the name of one of my Nigerian clients). The voice said: “Yes. I am in a terrible situation. I’ve been in a car accident and I need to make a payment to the police.  You’re the only one who can help me out.”

“Can you purchase a MTN (Phone) scratch off card for 3,000 Nigerian Naira (NGN)  and send the scratch off number to me?”  (This scratch off number can be turned into untraceable cash though MTN money.)  This sounded like a legitimate request, and I couldn’t really distinguish Majek’s voice over the scratchy mobile phone line, so, I had the driver stop and I purchased 3,000 NGN worth of credit. Ed quickly scratch off to reveal the code and I texted it to the number I had for Majek.  The caller called back and said that his other phone was in his car that had had been locked by the police.  So, he requested that I read the scratch-off numbers over the phone to him.  I obliged. Total so far: 3,000 NGN ($19).  One part of me felt glad that I could help out my client, and was flattered that he would come to me when he was in trouble.

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Then he called back, stating that 3,000 wasn’t enough – he needed 3,000 more, since the police was requesting an additional “fee” to release him.  So, I had the driver stop at a different MTN card seller and purchased more cards.  In five minutes he called back to get the scratch-off numbers.  Once again, I obliged.  Ed waved the cash outside of the car window, purchased the cards, and quickly scratched off the numbers. Total so far: 6,000 NGN ($38).

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Was this enough?  Alas, no.  He called back again to say the police was requesting an additional 3,000 NGN and I was the only one who could help him.  We found another vendor, purchased the cards, scratched off the numbers and read him the numbers. Total so far: 9,000 NGN ($57).

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Iteration Four.  We did it again!  This time the accident victim was going to die if he didn’t pay for the hospital. Total so far: 12,000 NGN ($75).

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Then, he called back and requested more funds for more hospital bills for the person in the accident. “I am afraid he might die….”, he said.  Finally fed up, I said “That’s all I can do.  Why don’t you call someone else.  I am going to the hotel. And I won’t be near any scratch off card salespeople.  Bye!”  I left the car and went in to the hotel.

All this time, I never suspected a thing.  Then, the next morning, the phone rang again.  I assumed it was Majek who wanted to make a plan to repay me.  But, no … he had a request for an additional 4,500 NGN  saying “the person will definitely die if you don’t loan me the money. I can’t call anyone else about this.”   I said, “Sorry Majek, I have no way of getting  any cards right now.  Please call someone else. “ After three more calls, he finally stopped calling.

Then, I began to feel a bit stupid.  If the person in the accident hadn’t died yesterday, why was he about to die today?  Was this really Majek?  Had I been duped?

After breakfast, I emailed Majek to ask him whether he had been asking him for money.  Of course, he said “no”, and was appalled that a fellow Nigerian had been scamming me this way.  He wrote, “It’s really unfortunate. How could I have been asking you to send recharge cards to bail me out of police or hospital? It’s very bad. I never knew anything about it. Sorry that’s Naija for you”. (He also later confirmed that if he needed money, he could ask other people, and he would never ask me!)

Writing this account makes me sound very gullible and stupid.  But at the time, neither Ed nor I suspected a thing!  The driver didn’t say anything either.  The voice on the phone was very convincing when he was conveying his panic and desperation.  Now thinking back, I should have been more wary …. But now I know!

So, if you ever need money from me, you’ll have to ask in person so I can verify the request!  TIA.