Money where your mouth is…

Welcome 2015.  i had a lovely long break over Christmas enjoying the joys and freezing cold of New England, knowing that this will probably the last time for a while that I can take a holiday…

…because, yes, I successfully completed my first raise before Christmas so now it is time to build the marketplace.  Still taking small steps, so we are using an off the shelf site to keep costs low and launching with just a couple of partners, including Castellano Ethnic Origins (as a soft launch) – aiming to be in the next 4-6 weeks.  We are also expanding the Just Clothing Company product range to include some scarves from Women’s Weave, an amazing organisation aiming at providing employment and preserving traditional weaving skills in India.

However, I’ve still to settle on a name for the marketplace.  The question is do we go for a neutral name (e.g. JUST) or one that specifically states what we are doing in the title (justethical, justforwomen, justsupportingwomen etc.)?  Still undecided but need to make a decision soon.

So back to it – Happy New Year to you all

Time to step up

So I’ve been full time on Just Clothing Company for 5 months now and we’ve made huge steps:

• Selling on notonthehighstreet;
• Selling on Etsy;
• First women’s group up and running and first product produced;
  

  Winter Silk Scarf and Block Print by Just Clothing Company

• Established a board of advisors;

I also got my first bout of Dengue, but not sure this is an achievement.  I’ve connected with some wonderful people who have been so supportive in my work and am slowly starting to get a grip of social media.  This, perhaps, has been one of the most challenging aspects, mainly because my inherent Britishness doesn’t want to boast or sell – well, if I want to do this well I’m going to have to do both!

So what is next?  Just Clothing Company was only ever the first stage – a way to test and learn about the market, marketplace, products and women’s groups.  The next phase is building a marketplace.  The big picture is to ‘create an online clothing and accessories marketplace where women-led businesses from some of the poorest communities in the world can sell their ethically made products to the international market’.  And I mean it to be big, global and highly successful.  I want this to be a place that challenges and changes the perception of ethical and sustainable.  Think John Lewis of the online world.

Most people shop at John Lewis because it sells good quality products – the fact that it is a cooperative, owned by all its staff, is incidental to purchasing decisions. Can we do the same? JUST Marketplace will source and sell some amazing, unique clothes and accessories that will not be found anywhere else and that’s why people shop there.  The fact that all the products are ethically made, from women’s-led initiatives and that artisan groups will directly sell (therefore receive all their profits) will be important to some but will not be a driver for the majority and if we want to be a global success we need to recognise this within our customers.

So the next step?  Investment!  We need to build our own marketplace, we need to get sellers onboard and selling their products and we need to market this.  As much as we have already achieved, we are asking a lot for people to invest in us right now.  Start ups have a huge failure rate and the complexities of factoring in future raises means we have to put a small, nominal value on the company – so, high risk investment for very little shares anyone?!  Luckily, this can be somewhat ameliorated by an amazing UK government scheme (called SEIS), basically they will offset 75% of your investment against tax breaks.  But what I am basically asking people to do is invest in me.  Trust that I will work my little socks off to get this business off the ground and make it a success.  And I can promise everyone of those investors that that is exactly what I intend to do.

It’s complicated.

I was recently taken on a tour of an arts project in the largest of Mumbai’s slums.  The focus of this amazing work is engaging the community in a conversation about violence against women and sexual health.  The Dharavi Biennale is the brainchild of SNEHA, a wonderful organisation I have had the privilege of working in partnership with for a number of years.  Alongside their life changing work in maternal and newborn health and brilliant prevention of early childhood nutrition projects they also have one of the world’s largest prevention of violence again women and children initiatives, headed up by the amazing Dr Nayreen Daruwalla.

 

Nayreen and David Osrin (a Wellcome Professor who has been collaborating on some groundbreaking research projects with SNEHA for many years) recently published their research on classifying women’s death from burns in India.  This is a horrific issue, on more than one level, that particularly affects the poorest communities in India; most of these deaths occur by accident in women in loose fitting saris and shalwars, often made from cheap-flammable fabrics, cooking on floor-standing hobs with open flames.  However, a small but significant number occur are due to homicide and suicide strongly linked to spousal/family abuse and a phenomenon known as ‘Dowry Death’.

Whilst Nayreen and David were showing me round the Dharavi Biennale, a journalist arrived to discuss their recently published research.  There was a clear agenda attached to the interview.  The journalist wanted a headline-grabbing statistic on the number of women victims of ‘Dowry Death’ and the general inadequate response by the police.  Firstly, this was not the aim of the research, it was a case study, not looking at large numbers but rather concentrating on detailed interviews from a small number of participants.  Secondly, it was not assessing the effectiveness of the police response but rather assessing how burns victims’ deaths were classified (e.g. as accidental death, homicide or suicide).  To try and draw out population level statistics from this: “XX% of women admitted to hospital with burns are a case of Dowry Death” is both inaccurate and irresponsible.

And most important of all, Nayreen’s prevention of violence against women and children initiative relies on working closely with the police for to safeguard the lives of many vulnerable women and children.  By associating the work they do with allegations of policy inadequacies, such potential assertions made by a journalist could have a very real and dangerous impact on her work.

Scientific research rarely supports a simple yes/no hypothesis.  Trying to over-simplify and use headline-grabbing tactics to present this work only deepens the distrust between the scientific and the wider community and at times this can have life-threatening implications.  As with everything in life it is multifaceted, however this doesn’t mean it is too complex to understand, just complicated…

How do you afford to keep your daughter safe?

In some communities young girls are vulnerable every time they leave the house.  The older they get the more at risk they are. As parents, more than anything you want your children to be safe – often in these communities children are withdrawn from school at 16 – the risk of them walking their each day is too much (or perceived to be).  However, not allowing these girls to leave the house puts the parents under economic stress.  In traditional patriarchal societies the solution has always been to marry them off.  A married woman is (perceived) to be less vulnerable and it is one less mouth to feed.

Leaving education early and marrying young is not ideal – with less economic opportunities preventing her from accessing health care and birth control, and lower status increasing her risk of living within an abusive relationship. Children born to young mothers are at higher risk to malnutrition and morbidity.  None of these scenarios work out well.

Economic empowerment really is the key.  I heard an amazing story yesterday.  Sushma left school at 15, her parents were ready to marry her off as soon as they could, but she found out about an embroidery class and her parents agreed she could attend.  She works for a garment manufacture making boutique hand-stitched goods.  She can do this safely from her home and is now the highest breadwinner in the house.  Her parents have agreed to delay any marriage and her new economic power means she now is involved in any marriage negotiation.  The work Just Clothing Company does will support beautiful, unique handcrafted products but also revolutionise the lives of those engaged in their production.

Why Women?

Here’s three facts for you:

• WOMEN PERFORM 66% OF THE WORLD’S WORKING HOURS;
• WOMEN EARN ONLY 10% OF THE WORLD’S INCOME;
• WOMEN OWN ONLY 1% OF THE WORLD’S PROPERTY.

“Strong growth can not be sustained without gender equality and the empowerment of one half of the world’s population. Gender equality is smart economics and a key driver of global development”

Dr Jim Yong Kim, President, World Bank Group

 

“By investing, by allowing [women] to create businesses that create profits you are creating a self sustaining loop. It goes way beyond philanthropy because it yields profits”

Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs

 

And here’s the real incentive:

ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN TRANSLATES INTO GREATER INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN’S EDUCATION, HEALTH AND NUTRITION, WHICH LEADS TO ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE LONG TERM.

 

The barriers for women-led artisan businesses to reach the global market are many and varied, including lack of finance to purchase quality materials, lack of knowledge of international consumers taste and trends, technological and financial barriers to establishing an online shop and lack of access to international payment facilities. By providing a marketplace to showcase their products and process online payments, whilst providing design and technological support, Just Clothing Company can enable these communities to increase their revenues and grow their businesses.

 

From Concept to Reality

Anyone who’s anyone in the world of start ups will tell you that you need to be flexible enough to adapt and change.  That the original concept will very rarely reflect the final business model.  This, in itself, is a challenge because egos have a habit of overriding good advice.  My salient advice would be to hold true to your key aim, everything else can move and shift but what matters is achieving this key objective:

“Economic empowerment of women from some of the poorest communities in the world using a sustainable and scalable business model”

So I’ve started with Just Clothing Company, tentative steps to testing the market and using the profits to get some women’s-led artisan businesses off the ground, but this model is hard to scale.

Where I want to take it is much, much bigger so the concept must evolve.  I want this to be the ‘Amazon Marketplace for artisans from all over the world’.  A one-stop-shop for consumers wanting high-quality, unique clothing and accessories that reflect their values and ethics.

So the business model changes but the core concept remains true.  Here’s to a long and prosperous future of staying true to your values and keeping egos in check!