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CHALLENGE SUMMARY
Situated in Mysore, Karnataka, India, Bag N’ Stories works with woman from rural and urban areas in India, to produce a range of cotton carry bags, a project that seeks to empower women by giving them financial independence, through different kinds of activities that allow them to acquire the proper equipment and sustainably produce their products. Since 2018, the organization has worked in two different places, one set in a rural area (the first one) and a second one in an urban area (relatively).
This project is made by G N Raghu who has a mechanical engineer background. He first had had experience in the automobile industry and later got engaged in technology development. Besides Bag N’ Stories, he is also the founder of Studio for Humanscale Technologies.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
ABOUT THE PROJECT
In addition to looking for opportunities for women who do not have easy access to the world of work, the project also seeks to have a positive environmental impact, by giving a sustainable solution to packaging against disposable plastics. Lastly, one of the main objectives is to replicate the horizontal development model of Bag N’ stories, instead of a vertical development one. They have already started with this process by replicating the model with the help of a local entrepreneur.
Darji Catalogue.pdfTHEIR WORK
THEIR WORK
Bag N’ Stories work with women who, either because they are caregivers of an elder or children, or because they cannot leave the house unattended, they can’t leave their homes to attend a workplace. The organization encourages women, from urban and rural areas who have previously acquired stitching skills in local institutes, to produce cotton bags. For those women who lack stitching skills, they try to give them less skilled jobs like screen printing and block printing. In the production of the cotton bags, Bag N’ Stories helps build an inclusive society, by not only providing women in vulnerable circumstances to develop new skills or put those skills into practice, but also by conveying their stories through a visual story printing in the backs of the bags and packaging, decreasing, by this way, the gap between the worker and the customer.
WHAT ARE THE REQUESTS?
WHAT ARE THE REQUESTS?
Product
Product focus. Types of product. Product design. Target Market. Build credibility in terms of your product. Product price.
Quality standards of the product. How will quality be managed on a certain scale.
Needed:
A small team needs to be there to take care of assortment planning, design, material composition etc.
Given the scale it would be better that the team takes care of the raw material and quality management.
Sales & Marketing
How consumers are acquired.
Business model (B2B?)
Marketing approach
Focus on the four P’s: Product, price, place, promotion: Evaluate your product and identify where in the market it can best be positioned. Then deciding on the pricing we can charge for the product and then designing marketing strategy accordingly.
Needed:
Social media and influencers
Speakers who can promote the products for pro-bono
Can luxury/high end retailers buy these bags as packaging material for their products?
Finance
Where to get the funding (NGOs? Entreprises?)
Profit Management: What volume is required to cover all the costs?
THEIR VALUES
THEIR VALUES
Women empowerment.
Social inclusion.
Sustainability.
Horizontal development.
What will you Gain?
What will you Gain?
Be part of the choice to put sustainable fashion in the spotlight, and become a change maker! Moreover, you could be one, in a global network of diverse professionals that work together to find comprehensive solutions, to help re-shaping a new paradigm, for the sustainable fashion industry. And then, why not implementing change at the local level?
Bag'N Stories Intro for HNX.mp4CHALLENGES
Quality Management. Since they are a decentralized working system, instead of a centralized working system like the garment industry, quality management presents itself, as a difficult process. Quality management is a very difficult process since there is no centralized training institution. As a result, different women have different stitching performances, making it hard to maintain a standardized and unified quality management.
Social Media Management. Their team is rather small, lacking designers and communication experts, which results in poor social media presence. They lack a proper website with convenient design and content management. Even though they are currently exploring different kinds of financial support, today they require assistance to obtain it.
Product Diversity. They do not have much product diversity and they wish to expand on the variety of raw materials. They are currently just producing cotton cloth, and they wish to introduce products made of different sustainable materials, through which they can continue providing the entire industry a solution for the packaging issue. Regarding this challenge, Raghu has already begun the process of establishing new collaborations, but they are yet to be established.
Financial planning and equipment. Another important challenge has to do with financial issues regarding equipment. Home-based stitchers lack proper machines. Women have smaller machines, designed to stitch only garments rather than bags. There is clearly a technological gap for women who want to explore new products, since these machines are very limited for the production of new and different kinds of bags. This issue is also a key tool to cover the quality issue. In short, they require some guidance on the planning on how to provide women with the proper technology.
Financial Planning and Debt Management. A second issue regarding finance has to do with how will women return the money for the acquired equipment. Since they are constituted as a social enterprise, they want stitchers to own the equipment. In this case, they require guidance to plan how they are going to be paid back.
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