Our3Q – Plush and Play, Philippines
Fabien Courteille – founder of Plush and Play, a social enterprise born inside Gawad Kalinga – the Enchanted Farm. It highlights the undervalued sewing skills of the women living in Gawad Kalinga communities to make hand-stitched soft and lovely stuffed toys and felt items. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? We can be proud to be the first Filipino toys to be sold in toy stores in the Philippines. It’s quite a message, we are home-made toys prepared by women in their houses in the Philippines and yet we can compete with mass production from China. It’s a big milestone and a big source of proud for the mothers here. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Being entrepreneur is just about facing challenges. I feel my life is about solving challenges, whenever one is solved, another come up. Basically you never can say: oh, I made it. It’s people around you saying you are successful, you are running a sustainable business. For you as entrepreneur, every single day is about solving problems: production related, supply chain related, financial, sells related, distribution… You are there to find the strength to solve […] Read More
Our3Q – The Spark Project, Philippines
Patch, Ian, Pao, RJ, Chux – founders of The Spark Project, which is a community that aims to showcase Filipino talent and ingenuity through an online crowdfunding platform where they can campaign to fund their creative, innovative, and passion-driven projects. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? The community we built in the past few years. The projects we continue to stay in touch with, projects which were found through our crowdfunding platform. We have friendship born from crowdfunding activities as we work close together with the projects which use the platform. Without even asking them to give back, they are eager to help, not just to us but the all community. We were successful to create this kind of community to share and give back without really asking or imposing it. They make themselves available. It shows how we have helped them through their journey, now they look forward to help others. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? At the beginning the biggest challenge was to educate people on what crowdfunding is. This is changing a little bit. Next step is to push people to start their own crowdfunding project. […] Read More
Our3Q – BigNayFarm, Philippines
Edison – founder of BigNayFarm, a permaculture coffee and cacao farm. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? Learning that the key of all of this was actually my level of engagement with the people I’m working with. I try to encourage people to take different kind of business, to turn into organic and permaculture farming. And I can’t do that without a deep level of engagement. It’s more than just proving that my way is more profitable. It’s about building a relationship and understanding the philosophy behind it. When I learned that and proved that mainly to myself… it’s a big achievement. During the first months of managing the farm I went through many things. I had 12 team members and I needed to let them go because I didn’t feel they understood what I want to do. And I can’t stay at the farm all the time, I feel I’m more effective on other ways, so I needed to find a farm manager. The success came when through trying to be a part of the community as much as possible I managed to find this person which was working with me. We became […] Read More
Our3Q – Risqué Designs, Philippines
Tal – founderof Risqué Designs, which is a Filipino lifestyle brand that brings forth modernity and luxury with its meticulously hand-crafted artisan products. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? I think having this shop here, in one of the biggest shopping malls. We are visible and more recognized. Before we only joined trade fairs. I’ve started in 2012, but I was doing it part time. I went full time in 2014. I had my first show room. The year after I got investors and I was able to create my own factory. Before I outsourced shoe making, but I had a lot of problems with production and quality of the shoes so I wanted to go for my own warehouse. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? A lot of challenges. A lot of them come from production and sells. When I started, I had a selling company, many problems with production, the quality was not good, shoes came back because clients were not satisfied. It’s hard, because there are so many different parts of the shoe which can go wrong. I think that among fashion items shoes are particularly difficult. […] Read More
Our3Q – Co.lab, Phillipines
Francesca – founder of Co.lab, a co-working space which offers a professional working environment with all the amenities of a regular office, and some good vibes to boot. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? It’s difficult to say. There are a lot of organizations here that are strong in terms of funding or pitching and we are happy to support them. But I’m still waiting for the big success story. For Co.lab the biggest success is that we are still around. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Going through the entrepreneurial path. I’m last remaining from the founding team. There were a lot of ups and downs and every year somebody said: or I earn that much or I don’t stay. I was not able to find a team until now which is… just as committed. A lot of people find social entrepreneurship sexy, they may think it’s a great idea but they don’t realize how difficult it is. And when that sexy factor goes away, it’s where the real work begins… and a lot of people give up. I’ve seen that a lot over the last 5 years. I‘m […] Read More
Our3Q – Rajana, Cambodia
Nimul – manager of Rajana, a company that seeks to resurrect the creative talent that until recently has been deserted. Rather than simply adopting purely western designs into Cambodian village workshops, Rajana identifies and take advantage of the valuable methods and designs unique to Cambodia, and pair those methods with stylish and modern designs. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? We export a lot of products. We managed to open a new shop in Siem Reap. We started a new line of products which is recycled jewelry. We get income and we are able to pay salary to a lot of people from disadvantage backgrounds. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Quantity and time line of production. Sometimes it’s difficult for us to make schedules, we work by hands. Often we are not able to do as many products as the clients want, big orders are out of our capacity. Also quality can be a challenge. Not all products are good enough to meet standards. When we are in a rush, there is not enough time for control. Often we have to do some products again and it takes even longer. […] Read More
Our3Q – Mungil Souvenir, Indonesia
Septiyah – founder of Mungil Souvenir – a shop with souvenirs made by small, local producers. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? I’m glad I can help people to sell and promote their products. They really need support to improve the way they market and sell their things. Our biggest success is that we have more demand than before and it means they have more income. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? The biggest challenge for us are government regulations, especially about export and import. First of all, for the import and export policies Indonesia is full of imported stuff from China, which is really cheap, and it is threatening our local products. Government regulations don’t really support the micro-enterprise, especially regarding funding. Another challenge is to encourage craftsmen (small producers) to make a new product or make some innovation because there is a certain demand. They prefer to wait and copy from others. I always work with them and introduce them to a new design, inform them about what is trendy now. I also help them promoting their products through social media and teach them how to communicate with consumers […] Read More
Our3Q – Women for Women, Cambodia
Veasna – founder of Women for women – a social enterprise which delivers handicraft products prepared by women from disadvantaged backgrounds. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? For providing jobs to 35 women, some of them with disabilities, without possibility to work in any different place. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? The most difficult is to find the market to sell products. If I can sell more products, we can have more jobs for women in need. When we have a lot of jobs they work overtime, till midnight, they really need money to support the family. Sometimes they have 8 brothers and sisters, they need to send money to the family. That’s why they try to work as long as possible. When I was young, I didn’t know my country is like that. Only at school I started to realize it, I had one poor friend, I shared food with her. I visited her house and sent some food there as well. They lived in a very small cottage, not even a proper house. I felt I’m lucky to go to school, to have food. When I go […] Read More
Our3Q – PSE, Cambodia
Alice – main manager of PSE, a sewing workshop hires 25 women from the poorest background to prepare uniforms and handicraft products. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? That we are able to meet the demand of producing 14.000 good quality uniforms per year for PSE school and still have time to answer other external orders. And the way we treat our tailors. They have one year contract here but we renew it as long as they want. They have health insurance, annual and sick leaves, which is not so obvious in Cambodia. They don’t work during the weekend. In a standard day they start at 7AM in the morning, at 10 they have stretching. They finish at 4.30PM, so they can take their children from PSE school, all of them have children there, and go back home with them. They have 145$ salary, which is higher than in a lot of other factories, and 5$ motivation bonus. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? To find out what is the best business model for this workshop. Should we keep going inside PSE or become more independent? How to build an […] Read More
Our3Q – Impact Hub, Cambodia
Melanie – Communications and Community Manager at Impact Hub, co-working space for those who want to make a difference. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? For getting more and more Cambodians coming. The idea of a co-working space is not really common here, so at the beginning we had mainly foreigners. Now we focus more on the Cambodian market, we organize more events only in Khmer, put information on our facebook in Khmer. Students here are working during the day and studying during the night, so they don’t have a lot of time to come here, but they are interested on what we are doing and become part of our other programs. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Impact Hub was created in Western countries and the business model was to get money from membership. But here we cannot base our revenue just on that. If we put too high membership fee, we lost all Cambodians. So it’s challenge to get on the one hand the revenue and be sustainable, and on the other good activities and quality services. We try to raise additional funds by consulting, teaching. We also […] Read More
