Today we were in Kaolack Village with the bakery and restaurant businesses. We started the day with Anna Lowe giving an excellent lesson in business planning which was translated into Wolof by Marieme Jamme. The girls followed with interest and it built on their existing knowledge of basic accounting.

We then briefed Viola Vaughn of our thoughts from yesterday and began discussing the organic tea business we are due to cover on Friday. After the conversation we all sat down together for a delicious meal together..

After lunch we broke into 2 groups; Anna Lowe and Jonathan Roe worked with the bakery business and Marieme Jamme and Richard White worked with the sewing business. The process was similar to yesterday – working with them to understand the investment requirement and the numbers to back it up.

The bakery business was once working very successfully in Kaolack town until their landlord ended their tenancy. They moved to Kaolack village and although they are still trading by doing lunches for local NGOs. It was established that they really need help on deciding the shape and direction of their business before investing any money. Anna and Jonathan will be helping them think through their options tomorrow,

The sewing business had an ambitious request for 12 extra sewing machines. This would have trebled the capacity and so their existing customers came under a lot of close scrutiny. The quality of existing customers was not as good as they thought and they had no concrete plans on where the extra orders were going to come from.

Marieme and Richard loved the products and could see that there was a potentially big business here but adding extra capacity at this stage would saddle them with costs they could not afford at present. We quickly changed mode from Dragons to trouble shooters and looking at helping them develop a sales and marketing strategy. Once the quality orders start to come in then there will be no problem getting funding for the sewing machines.

A major element of our work is in providing these girls with much needed business education and so tomorrow we will be focusing on sales and marketing. These girls have fantastic products but just like the owners of small businesses everywhere, they need help in better selling and marketing themselves and their products. To be continued tomorrow!