Sourcing Paper Bead Jewelry in Uganda

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Flying from Accra to Kampala, we traveled through … Dubai!

Our options for this segment were not ideal, since there are no direct flights. The four options were:  spending the night in the Nairobi airport for a 4 am departure (hmm… not so good); spending the night in the Lagos airport (ugh!); traveling through Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) with a long middle of the night layover (again… not so attractive); or flying a bit further on Emirates with a three hour 6 – 9 am stop in Dubai. As all the choices were the same price, we opted for the Dubai route.

When we landed in Kampala, we were met by a driver who took us to Jinja, a bustling town on Lake Victoria. This is where the Nile River starts its long journey. We checked into our peaceful guesthouse and crashed. Continue reading →

Visiting Suppliers in Africa. First Stop: Ghana!

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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 →

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!

jan, ed ibk

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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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 →