Results

Filipina Fair Trade Venture (FFTV)

Independency for handicraft marketing NGO

About FFTV

FFTV - handicraft producer Filipina Fair Trade Venture (FFTV) is a spin off of the NGO APFTI, Advocate of Philippines Fair Trade Inc. to access export markets for handicraft producers. It's an NGO, operational since 2004, and not self sustainable yet. It is a partner of Cordaid and has 5 employees, of which Ramona Ramos is Managing Director. APFTI and FFTV have the same Board of Directors. The objective of FFTV is to access international markets for Filipino fair trade producers from APFTI's network. The social impact of FFTV is:

local employment and/or income generation
community involvement
improving quality of life

Business case

This business case is follow up of the APFTI-case in 2006. A group of professionals worked on the key question, formulated by Ramona Ramos: how can I make my business self sustainable? FFTV was matched in a Group Programme with:

Mr. Erik Jager, owner HRM interim bureau Entrance
Mr. Floris Visser, project manager NedTrain
Mrs. Tinke Wesseling, Consultant Marketing Sciences Accenture
Mrs. Rozemarijn Jager, Strategy consultant Accenture

Results

Analysis

The key question on how to make a business self sustainable was divided in two concrete questions:

How can FFTV internal change it's organisation to become more efficient?
How can FFTV boost sales?

To answer these questions, analysis was done by organising interviews with producers, with the board, with co-workers and with clients on their dreams of an ideal FFTV. With this information, the team created an elaborated SWOT analysis on both the internal organisation, and on sales opportunities.

Advice

To make FFTV a profitable business, the following changes are recommended in the internal organization:

Decrease costs of product development
Transition into a Fair trade wholesaler, reducing number of products in range and number of new products
Set up pricing to cover all costs and differentiate for different market segments
Shift effort from trade fairs to selling missions
Improve skills in aggressive sales, financial business sense and market analysis & research

The only way to really increase sales, given a sound internal organization, is a thorough market analysis:

Know who & where your client (segment) is
Know how much value your client (segment) represent
Know what your client (segment)'s buying motivation is
Know the competitors competing for your client (segment)'s business
Determine strategy to best suit the buying motivations of the most valuable client (segments)

These advices were put into a operational plan, concerning financial changes, product development, pricing strategy, sales channels, internal competencies. The team concluded that:

FFTV can become a profitable business
FFTV needs more than 10 months to realize this
FFTV needs to improve both internal organization and marketing & sales strategy to realize this
FFTV does not necessarily have to become a 100% commercial business

Impact on the overseas partner

The board (of both APFTI and FFTV) was very happy with the advices which gave them lots of operational ways of improving internal organization and access to new markets. Managing Director Ramona Ramos felt strengthened in her view that FFTV could be a viable organisation by itself. Also, she really appreciated the coaching from both FFTV - Local fishing learning Facilitator from De Baak as from team member Erik Jager. She now has a new job at the World Fair Trade Organisation to improve the FairTrade network of Asia. She is working there with one of FFTV's board members.

Impact on the European partners

The Dutch team members all had a different impact: one changed her job, the other proceeded the learning experience in a MBA programme, the other got promoted and the last one visited the Philippines in the summer of 2009 with his family on a world trip that he planned while being there with SharePeople.

Follow up

In 2008, the board requested SharePeople for an expert in interim management to consolidate the organisations APFTI and FFTV into one. This lead to another successful business case.

Mrs. Ramona Ramos participated in the SharePeople Experience Week 2009 in the Netherlands to work on business opportunities in the fair trade sector in Europe and to exchange experiences, knowledge and leadership skills with other Ambassadors from different parts of the world.