Kindly consider this document to be in the public domain. You are welcome to add to it, improve it, share it and help find a funder. The ideal target is a safari company operating in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Any NGO, business or person is welcome to get involved and get this project on the ground and happening.
Botswana Quality Baskets is a hotspot and a hive of activity. If we can make eBotswana Quality Baskets an electronic hotspot, grassroots international development in Botswana will be taken into the 21st century.
Draft Project Proposal: Create eBotswana Quality Baskets
Prepared By: David Young
LoneWolf eConsulting
February, 2016
Table of Content:
- Project Introduction: Grass Roots Development – Basket Weaving
- Historical Perspective: “With baskets a women can make a life.”
- Purpose: To Develop an eBotswana Quality Baskets Shop
- Scope of Work: Tasks to Enter New Marketplace
- Project Costs: The Price to Enter New Marketplace
- Financial Projections – Breakeven to Profit
- Call To Action
- Relationship Going Forward
1. Project Introduction: Grass Roots Development – Basket Weaving
I have prepared the following project proposal to create an electronic retail shop for Thitaku Kushonya because of our long standing business relationship. I was Director of the Maun Business Training Centre from 1994-1996. During that time I worked with USAID to create a 6 month training program in Community Based Natural Resource Development. She has proved to be a most successful graduate of that program.
We also worked together with Conservation International for 15 months in 2001-2002. She provided basket weaving training in northern Ngamiland and I assisted in marketing the baskets that were produced by the women receiving training. Together we sold over 1,600 of the baskets that the training basket weavers produced. The project was cut short because of the 9/11 bombing in New York and the resulting contraction of funding.
I continued working in Maun until 2014. Initially I worked with United Development operating their Management Information Systems. In 2008 I started a bookkeeping / marketing company – Business Transactions – providing services for companies in construction, safari lodge and two property management companies.
During these years we stayed in touch. I have talked with visitors who were thrilled to have taken her ½ Day Basket Making Workshops while they were visiting Maun. I also assisted her as she built her Humbukushu Cultural Village. I also stayed in contact with regional weavers by supporting the Annual Basket Weaving competition at the Nhabe Museum as the anchor supporter.
I do have other international experience:
˃ 1987-1999 Lecturer, Institute of Public Administration and Management, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
˃ 1997 6 months, Election Trainer, Bosnia, Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe.
˃ 1997-1999 Lecturer, Economics Department, Can Tho University, Vietnam.
2. Historical Perspective: “With baskets a woman can make a life.”
Thitaku Kushonya started weaving baskets over 41 years age. She has become a Master Basket Weaver and has helped many hundreds of women to weave baskets with improved designs and quality.
Mma Kushonya was born in Etsha 7, Botswana, along the western side of the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. Her early business experience was with the Botswana Christian Council at their Etsha Craft Retail Shop. She also worked for 4 years with Conservation International training women of northern Botswana to improve their quality of weave and design, along with how to look at baskets as a business activity.
Thitaku has won many basket competitions and represented Botswana, both at home and at International Trade Fairs – Washington DC, Atlanta, Santa Fe, Capetown, Windhoek, Madagascar and Disneyland. Her entrepreneurial business spirit makes every activity she participates in a learning experience for herself and those who are participating along with her. She internalizes the concept of life long learning and business progress and growth.
Since 2001 she has developed her Botswana Quality Baskets shop into a thriving rural business and recognized brand in Maun, Botswana. Many customers who have visited her shop have found the experience to be one of the highlights of their visit to Botswana. The most dedicated customers are the one’s who have had the time to take the half day Introduction to Basket Weaving Workshop, where they learned how to start making a basket for themselves. It is also a brilliant introduction to Botswana culture.
To those of us who know her, Thitaku Kushonya is a cultural icon who embodies and expresses through her works and actions many of the best values of Botswana Culture – cheerful, industrious, welcoming and helpful. Did I mention her great sense of humour?
3. Purpose: To Develop and Implement eBotswana Quality Baskets
The time is right for Thitaku Kushonya to open a new shop – eBotswana Quality Baskets. The ways business can be done have changed dramatically in the last 15 years since she started her shop. We now have business platforms that allow Thitaku to create an internet version of her shop to sell her products to a much wider market than just the customer who visit her shop. Bricks and mortar have been replaced by electronic versions of the old business model. With a smartphone, laptop and iPad, Thitaku can be in contact and direct communication with customers from around the world.
An electronic store can be created on the internet and backed up with a marketing mix of tools to help market the baskets to the world. She goes to the world rather than waiting for the world to come to her. A coordinated presence can be made to market the eShop with a Website, Blog, Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Instagram sites that take her products and messages to a much wider audience. With the spoken word, printed word, photos and videos of work going on in Maun, we can make local products and activities available to a world wide audience.
Botswana has the quality infrastructure to support this project and help assist the success of its implementation – reliable electricity, internet, shipping and banking systems. Developing this project successfully can prove to be a model for other rural businesses in Botswana to follow.
The key ingredients are first and foremost a successful entrepreneur like Thitaku Kusonya, a quality product with a history of Sales, a quality electronic store and a coordinated marketing mix on the internet to attract customers who are interested in baskets, how they are made, who makes them and are interested in buying baskets. With our marketing mix on the internet we need to develop and be recognized for authority, trust and quality. That is how we gain search engine recognition and ranking, primarily on Google.
- Scope of Work: The Tasks to Enter New Marketplace
- Building the Foundation
Review Botswana Quality Baskets records of Sales and Operations
Identify local people/businesses to partner with for project implementation
Review and identify local store staff to work with, along with Thitaku Kushonya and myself
Identify inventory of products to include in new eStore and pricing
Establish eBotswana Quality Baskets business registration and USD bank account
Identify and develop shipping choices, policies, costs and skills required to ship products
Identify International Development Worker for 12-24month project start-up
- Producing Content
Photographs and written product description for beginning inventory
Develop and produce videos for eStore, website and blog using storylines
- Materials used in basket weaving
- Stages of weaving a basket
- Traditional designs in Botswana baskets
- Profiles of selected basket weavers
- Activities of Humbukushu Cultural Village
- Implement eStore and Marketing Mix
Develop eStore, Website, blog, Google+ and Instagram sites
Integrate with existing Facebook site
Staff training and operation procedures
- Begin Operations
Begin eStoes operation using Credit Card – VISA, Mastercard, Paypal
Begin eStore accounting system
Create categories of product for display on eStore
Replace inventory and have Sales Events on eStore
Monitor feedback from eStore customers, website, blog
Monitor sites for search engine optimization(seo) using Google Analytics
- Project Costs: The Price to Enter New Marketplace
US$
- Project Manager – 6 months x $1,000 – room and board 6,000
B. Project Manager – Return airfare Halifax to Maun 1,500
C. Equipment – Laptop, 2 x iPad, smartphone, card reader 2,500
D. Internet access – 12 months x $ 125 1,500
E. Store software – 12 months x $50 600
F. Software applications for store website 400
G. Local consultants to assist in project development 1,500
H. New signage/advertising for eBotswana Quality Baskets 1,500
Project Cost – payable upon receipts 15,500
6. Financial Projections – Breakeven to Profit
7. Call to Action
The next chapter in the business life of Thitaku Kushouya call out to me implemented. Creating an electronic version of Botswana Quality Baskets will allow customer who never physically walk into her shop to view the products that are for sale and purchase baskets that appeal to them. It is time to start exporting baskets from rural northern Botswana to customers around the world.
I have the experience in computers, business, marketing and local Botswana culture to be the Project Manager and make this endeavour a success. Together we can tell the stories of Mma Kushonya, how baskets are made, the history of basket weaving in Botswana and some of the local weavers who produce the baskets that will be for sale in the new electronic shop.
In the last 41 years the world has created what is called the Global Village. The interconnectivity of smartphones and the internet is resulting in ever increasing buying of product online. Buying online in Europe for 2014 was £132 million – an 18% increase over 2013, and is expected to rise to £156 million in 2015 – an increase of 18.5%.(1) The physical distance between buyers and sellers no longer is the barrier it once was. Online, the rural village is equidistant to all buyers in the new Global Village. eBotswana Quality Baskets is a prime candidate to participate in this evolving, growing marketplace. It has a recognized brand for quality baskets and can succeed and prosper in the new electronic marketplace. You can help make it happen.
What we need is start-up funding to get eBotswana Quality Baskets operating and some of the operating costs for the first year of operations. The first responsibility of every business is to operate at a profit. Our goal during the first year will be to breakeven and be self sustaining going forward. Thitaku and I have a history of running successful businesses. Together we can make this project a success. Together we can help increase the economic activity of rural northern Botswana. I invite all of you who read this proposal to respond with any questions you may have or recommendations to improve the proposal.
8. Relationship Going Forward
We are looking for a relationship(s) with an organization that sees the project as an opportunity to enter into a win-win situation with a new start-up. eBotswana Quality Baskets will pay back the initial investment many times over. Activities we are willing to discuss with you will include activities like:
- Basket training workshops in villages near your camps
- Planning Cultural Villages and activities
- Link sharing with your websites
- Recognizing your assistance on our websites
- Participation in international trade shows
The list is intentionally not lengthy, but is presented to indicate the direction our relationship can take going forward.
(1) Centre For Retail Research, http://www.retailresearch.org/onlineretailing.php
Thitaku Kushonya at her Botswana Quality Baskets shop.
