Socially Proactive Business is bigger than Acholi Beads.  In an effort to remove some of the barriers that people face in entering this sort of business, and also to invite discussion and advice, I’m open-sourcing our business model.  This continuing series, Open Circle, will share many of the challenges we have faced and the best practices we’ve established for making Acholi Beads successful on both sides of the world.

After choosing your partners and a local visionary, your choice of what product to make and sell is the next critical decision.  The key to choosing and developing a product is that it should stand on its own in the target market.  That is, regardless of the story behind it, people want to buy it because it’s just that attractive.

Acholi people, our partners in Acholi Beads, have a great sense of style.  The challenge is that it’s very different from American style, so how do we work with them to create jewelry that Americans love?  Here’s a quick plan that can help you identify and develop a great product that can be produced by people in a culture that is very different from the target culture.

1) Find a product you believe the American market will love, and that your partners will be able to produce, and bring it back to the States to test.  (If you can’t narrow it down to one product, bring five and see which works best.)  Ask your friends if they like it; get a booth at a local festival and try selling it; go to a local boutique and ask them if they’d like to stock it.  If it is a total bust, try something else, otherwise…

[Alternately, find a product that Americans already love that you believe your partners will be able to produce, like beanies.]

2) Use the feedback from the market to improve the product.  Consider designs, colors, and materials that will make it more attractive to the American market.  Be creative!  Don’t hem yourself into traditional designs.  Remember, the most important thing is to create a successful product.  Make new ones, sell them, and get more feedback, etc.

3) Give your partners in the developing world very specific design parameters.  Remember, they have never been to America so you are their only window through which to view the American market.  They want to make successful products, so teach them what Americans love.

4) Continually innovate with your partners.  Keep your product fresh and developing over time by changing colors or patterns and by introducing new designs.

5) Once you have a product that works, focus on it.  Get great at it.  Build a brand around it.  Don’t branch out to new products too soon.

Open Circle is written by James A. Pearson, and is an invitation to join Acholi Beads in using business for the benefit of those who need it most.  Email James here: james@acholibeads.com

Socially Proactive Business is bigger than Acholi Beads.  In an effort to remove some of the barriers that people face in entering this sort of business, and also to invite discussion and advice, I’m open-sourcing our business model.  This continuing series, Open Circle, will share many of the challenges we have faced and the best practices we’ve established for making Acholi Beads successful on both sides of the world.

My first principle for starting a business in a culture that I don’t belong to, and especially in a developing country, is this: Find and partner with a local visionary.

This where success starts.  It is the most important thing you can do to position for long term success by an order of magnitude.

What is a local visionary?  She’s the person who knows what is needed in the place you’re looking to work, and knows how to make it happen.  How does she know?  She grew up there and knows its culture, strengths, and lackings intrinsically, absorbed them like language.  She has long been working there to advance the goals that you share, using whatever resources she has marshaled to better her friends, family, and community members.  Her life bears the unmistakable gleam of service - the sincere smiles of her community when she sees them.  She is the one that her community happily rallies around when she brings them an idea for development.

She is your beginning.

Why is this important?  To answer this I like to tell the story of Mahabir Pun, a soft-spoken, pot-bellied, middle-aged man from a small village in rural Nepal.  When I met him he had spent the last decade working as a volunteer in his and surrounding villages, building up the local education system.  These villages are separated by days’ hikes over steep Himalayan geography, so Mahabir walks and walks and walks, up mountains and down again, sleeping on rough wood or dirt floors, in order to see the children of his home succeed in the rapidly modernizing world.  “As long as I can walk I can do this,” he says.

In college I had the marvelous fortune to visit Mahabir and assist in his work to connect these villages to each other and to the world through a long distance wireless network.  A brilliant friend of mine wrote a grant to supply the equipment, and we flew to Nepal.  Over a month of beautiful monsoon hikes we networked five villages, using two high-altitude relay stations and an internet connection 30+ kilometers away in the nearest city.  Leaving Nepal we felt the happy exhilaration of success.  But Mahabir’s work had only begun.

In the ensuing years Mahabir networked many more villages in the region, and in other parts of Nepal and Asia, and his work has been hailed with awards and honors from around the world.  His success did not depend on us; we only walked alongside him for one step of a much grander journey that he has continued every day since.  Mahabir is a local visionary.

Like Mahabir, a local visionary will ensure that your work is to the greatest benefit of the local community.  He understands how to organize and manage people in his community, and since he is broadly respected by his peers they trust and appreciate his leadership.  He will make your partnership with the local community easier, more enjoyable, and far more effective than otherwise.

What if, you might ask, after an exhaustive search you cannot find a qualified local visionary where you want to work?  You have two choices: 1) Go somewhere else, or 2) Cultivate one.  Acholi Beads chose option 2, which has brought us a unique set of challenges.  These I’ll share in a future edition of Open Circle.

Open Circle is written by James A. Pearson, and is an invitation to join Acholi Beads in using business for the benefit of those who need it most.

Acholi Beads is a Socially Proactive Business.  What is that?  It’s a business whose success is directly tied to making the world a better place.  Case in point, as Acholi Beads succeeds, more women in Uganda get a hand out of poverty.

But our way of doing Socially Proactive Business is just one way.  There are thousands of others!  And since business is the most powerful force that’s shaped the world in the last 100 years, we believe Socially Proactive Business can improve the world more than any other force in the next 100.

Do you have an idea for a Socially Proactive Business? Make it happen!  If the world gets better as your business succeeds, that’s Socially Proactive.  And if enough of us start these businesses, we can change the world.

We’d be glad to help you brainstorm and refine your ideas.  Just contact us!

It’s no secret that when money gets tights, like it is for most Americans just now, one of the first things to be squeezed off the budget is giving to charities and non-profits. This is understandable for families trying to pay the mortgage and keep food on the table. Unfortunately it hurts those who can least afford it - the global poor who depend on those organizations.

Socially Proactive Businesses, like Acholi Beads, have one great advantage over non-profits: We don’t rely on donations. Quite the opposite in fact. Our business is set-up so that Americans can make an income right alongside our Acholi partners.

Almost all of our sales are made through stores or other resellers, who mark Acholi Beads up to a competitive market price and reap the benefits, while simultaneously growing the market for our jewelry and changing lives in Uganda. Everyone wins.

And in a down economy like this one, Americans need an income just like everyone else. So while nonprofits lose volunteers and donors, Acholi Beads is gaining reps and resellers. People love the chance to make the world a better place, and pay some bills while doing it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think nonprofits do necessary and amazing work around the world.  I’m just exploring the different ways that such work can be done, and I think that Socially Proactive Business is emerging as one of the most powerful and sustainable modes of changing the world for the better.

For info on how you can get involved, visit our Contact page here.

The blog is making a comeback, starting today!  I’m in Uganda right now, have been for over a month.  I came with one goal in mind — to make Acholi Beads a model of Socially Proactive Business.  This means making it hugely beneficial for the women of Acholi Quarters, and making it as successful a business as possible.

Tomorrow George and the beadmakers will officially register a co-operative that we’ve been working on building for the last four weeks.  This co-op will provide a sturdy foundation on which they can build a host of other life-improving projects.  Already they have started a savings program that is helping them meet the bigger needs of life - school fees, medical expenses, etc.

This past weekend, all members of the co-op were invited to start training in personal financial management, including budgeting and saving to meet the needs of their families.  I contracted the best trainer I’ve ever met to teach a curriculum that we designed together in northern Uganda.  The women loved it.  After just the first session they were talking about how much better their lives would be.  And the trainer, after two days with the bead makers, said, “These women are so committed!  They are going to do something great.”

And that’s not all.  My sister Robin came to Uganda with me to consult on style and materials.  Thanks to her fashionable eye we have some fantastic new products and great changes to our current line to offer in the near future.  Keep your eyes peeled.  The new products will launch at about the same time as our new website, currently being slaved over by a few great friends of mine.

Acholi Beads is about to hit a whole new level of marketability, just as it reaches a new peak of life-change for the beadmakers.  This is Socially Proactive Business.