It all starts off with some fascinating women, people believing in their dreams, and a little bit of working capital.
One of the best parts of Project Nicaragua is that we work with a dozen businesses throughout the year and then follow up with them during our visits to Nicaragua. We've seen their business plans, we've tallked with them via video conference and now we finally get to see them and their businesses in person!
Our group split into two teams and got to visit three pretty outstanding businesses each. My group went to visit Eliesser a stovemaker, Sonia a seamstress, and Yasmin a watermaker.
Eliesser makes customized stoves and only advertises in the yellow pages. He makes these beautiful stainless steel stoves that people order to produce industrial goods for cooking. Eliesser is known for high quality stoves; however, he doesn't know what his competitors charge for stoves, but simply charges twice what it costs him to make a stove. Not a bad way to live life. He wants to purchase a machine that buffs the stainless steel; however, is it worth saving him time, when perhaps his time isn't that costly to begin with?
Sonia is a seamstress who makes custom order clothes. She takes orders from companies and also takes orders from vendors that sell in the market. All her clothes are from her design and they are very high quality clothes. However, she needs two new sewing machines to make higher quality clothes. The clothes she sells in the market, she sells for around 18 cordoba (less than a dollar) and it costs her 16 cordoba to make. Essentially her profit is 2 cordoba...pretty much nothing. Markets in Managua are selling clothes illegally brought in from El Salvador, so how can she make a profit when competing in this unregulated market? She wants to make uniforms for school, but can't afford the capital investment of buying clothes up front before anyone has ordered them. How can we help her meet 2 months of capital needs so her business can grow? Is she willing to take this risk that might seem relatively small to us, but might seem like her life savings to her?
Yasmin is the last visit of the day. She makes bags and bottled filtered water and is branching into the coke/flavored water products. She makes and distributes over 45,000 bags of water a day. After 20 years of operating, she's looking to expand in a big way. She recently branded her bagged water and is trying to develop a logo that identifies different products within her brand- Poche- named after her daughter when she couldn't pronounce her name at age 4. Yasmin is in the process of getting her business certified- this means passing health standards, revamping wall heights, and changing the chemical processes involved in creating each business.
Yasmin recently implemented a coke product with a logo that looks exactly like Coke. It's funny trying to figure out if there is a copyright law that they might be breaking. Or if rules like that simply aren't followed. She decided to forego chemicals to clean her water and is boiling it to decrease the environmental impact. Could she market this to eco-friendly tourists/hotels here? Does the sustainability factor mean a marketing advantage?
After all the business visits today, these things are clear:
1) In a machismo society, these business women have more self-confidence than I've seen in a long time. They have this purpose, this sense of giving back to the community, and it's clear why microfinance works wonders abroad. Giving women access to capital is a key pillar to success.
2) Today we learned not to let emotions cloud business decisions. Yasmin made some mistakes in the past when she was passionately involved with what she was doing and realized in retrospect that she was too close to the decision. So, how can you grow a business and follow up carefully on all decisions when you might be emotionally invested too?
3) How do we apply business concepts in a socialist world where business owners are not simply stand alone pieces of a community, but integral pieces that depend on each other for everything? How can these business owners sell to their friends, make a profit, and gain a competitive advantage when their competitor is their neighbor?
Being here I couldn't be more thankful for everything I have.
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