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Hugod Aklanon

Roadmap to self sustainability for Handicraft association

About Hugod Aklanon

Hugod Aklanon (2001) is an association that provides their member producers access to markets. Their 35 members are engaged in loom weaving, gifts and houseware, furniture, food processing, ornamental plants and flowers. These producers get their raw materials from their (around 800) suppliers in the remote villages in the province. Most of the products are sold to Philippine and foreign tourists in their two stores on Boracay Island; the famous No. 1 tourist attraction of the Philippines!

The vision of Hugod Aklanon is to have a unified and dynamic Small Medium Enterprises (SME's) Producers Association committed to provide quality services to members and clients. They are committed to aggressively market the products and provide other services for members' empowerment as well. They are constantly networking with e.g. Government Organizations and other stakeholders. By their work, they try to preserve and promote cultural heritage, as many products are produced the traditional way. Their goals for the next years is to increase sales by 20% annually and increase membership as well. This is the best way forward to increase social impact on their suppliers as well. The association is financed by the mark-up on the goods sold.

What was the assignment for the Group Programme in the Philippines?

During 2009 sales went down substantially, partly due to the global crisis. Next to that, the association feels not enough was done to reach the potential market, next to Boracay. The necessity was urgent to find a way to increase sales by developing a better marketing and sales strategy. But the association itself needed improvement as well. The BoD are volunteers (producers) and the 7 full time staff consists of office, finance and store employees. They wanted this organisational structure to change as well. A house needed to be built, in which marketing & sales activities can be executed in a more sustainable way.

For this task Hugod Aklanon received a team of professionals experienced in organisational change and marketing: Petra Elzinga (FNV), Willemijn Land (SharePeople), Eric Kokke (SOD Opleidingen) and Gieljan Beijen (NUON).

Analysis

The team tried to talk to as many stakeholders as possible, to analyse the current situation. This required a lot of flexibility, as many producers and Board members were at trade fairs and not easy to reach. Customer surveys were done on the streets of Boracay and competitive stores were visited. Together with Amelia (Mely) Rentillo, president of the Board, they finalised their SWOT analysis and came up with an advice on how to move forward.

Advice

A roadmap was developed on how to reach their end goal in 2012: transfer into a co-operative and being a self sustainable preferred supplier to (inter)national clients. In order to reach this final stage, 3 challenges have to be overcome:

- strengthening of the organisational structure & culture

- better marketing & sales of products

- deliver additional services for members

Quick wins are also identified, such as an improved display of the products, show map of the different products and continuous customer surveys.

The first step however is to elect a new committed Board, establish motivated staff to enable Hugod Aklanon to take up the tasks ahead. This can be done with the local assistance of APFTI (fair trade enabling training institute), also partner of SharePeople.

Impact on the partners

‘The chance to interact with people from a different culture and to see our organization in the eyes of someone else. I found this enriching,' Amelia Rentillo

A Dutch participant described this Group Programme as ‘the best experience in his life up until now.'

‘I learnt that synergy between the team members leads to a better result. Different approaches will give a better overall understanding of the issue.'

Follow up

This Group Programme is the start of a two year collaboration between SharePeople and Hugod Aklanon. For now, Hugod Aklanon is implementing the advice. SharePeople stays in close contact with the Board about the roadmap that should be put into practice. Next to that, every 6 months SharePeople conducts an evaluation, which could lead to an Expert Programme or participation in the yearly Experience Week to the Netherlands as well.