Hit ’em Where They Ain’t
Goodie O is introducing fellow entrepreneurs, the owners of the famed Carnivore and Fogo Goucho restaurants in Kenya, to longtime community development partners Samuel Muhunyo and Gwen Meyer. Today she’ll be having coffee at the popular Brazilian steakhouse next to her boutique to discuss the Karunga Women’s Group with them.
She is collaborating with NECOFA and Friends of Kenya School and Wildlife’s directors, Muhunyo and Meyer respectively.
Her high-end retail shop sells handmade goods crafted by various microentrepreneurs throughout Kenya – primarily women’s cooperatives. She has also been actively facilitating the wholesale export of these goods to Italy, Norway and the U.S. Today, she addresses the need to meet or create local demand instead of relying on large international shipment orders.
“They’ve got the tools, they’ve got the skill. We just need to work about 20% harder to perfect their products. Refine the products we already have rather than creating something new.”
They address some burgeoning personnel issues before tackling the matters they all want to address most – branding, niche marketing and expansion.
“We have so much competition from China. I want to encourage the producers to meet with the customers,” she explains.
“I want their products to be distinctly from Karunga. The line is too fine now between their products and those from Kenana or anywhere else.” Her private-sector savvy is unmistakable. She uses no unnecessary words. Every word is precise, exacting the same perfection she expects in her business. She is one of those people who never uses filler words like um or like.
“When we do capacity building for groups we have to regroup very quickly after meeting with buyers. They have an opportunity to create local demand instead of exclusively crafting products for export.”
It’s important for the women’s groups to interact with each other to exchange ideas and to offer benchmarks to help learn from each other. This is a continuous dynamic process to grow and improve.
She also sees this endeavor as an opportunity to impart leadership skills. Confidence. An entrepreneurial spirit.
“We utilize our design expertise to training to mentor Kenya craft makers improving designs and making quality products suitable for ‘first-world’ customers. We travel extensively throughout Kenya to identify groups which have the potential and willingness to elevate standards. We then coach the groups/individuals in design and quality assurance processes needed to make the step-change from a group just able to sustain themselves into a thriving, organised enterprise,” her website explains.
My friend Jim is a longtime supporter of the Karunga Women Group. We visited their workshop and saw their process firsthand. He stands against an enormous industrial loom in the center of the workshop where women of all ages and one young man are knitting, weaving, felting and crafting unique goods to be sold both locally and internationally.
He is proud of these rural entrepreneurs and everything they’ve accomplished.
Today he is challenging them to develop their own unique brand. A brand as immediately recognizable as the omnipresent Coca-Cola logo, recognizable the world over.
He reminds them that weaving is a centuries-old craft that has defined many cultures. With infectious passion and a sincere belief in the potential of these women he challenges them to create The Karunga Pattern. Much like the distinct Persian designs that represented the families that created them, family crests, tartan plaids or Maasai plaids, there is an opportunity to brand unique local goods and market them internationally. What they are making is not available anywhere else in the world. This is their strategic advantage.
He leans over and tells me, you gotta hit ’em where they ain’t.