Sal Art Gallery

Cost pricing for better business for Art Gallery in Addis Ababa

About Sal Art Gallery

Sal Art Gallery is a company with 37 women and girls and 3 men employees working under the management of director/designer Mrs. Salsawit Tsega. She started the Gallery in 2003 and is part of Ethiopia's Women Entrepreneur Group and is partner of Canadian CAWEE (http://www.cawee.net/). The Gallery's vision is "to empower and strengthen thousands of low income women in the city and beyond by creating a modern sophisticated Ethiopian brand that will be recognized worldwide."

The Gallery purchases raw material and produces its products from own designs. Products are made from recycled paper and jute, which is unique home accessory in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  The Art Gallery sells a big range of products (90 products) and next to the Art Gallery, they also uses 2 furniture stores as outlet. In 2008 the Art Gallery has a turnover of 35.000 USD and they aim for 5% growth for 2009.

Salsawit's dream is to become Fair-Trade via the Ethiopian Fair Trade Association, still being set up by the International Fair Trade Association (http://www.ifat.org/).

The business case

Sal Art Gallery wants to make itself ready for export to the U.S. and Europe and nearly all its customers in the Gallery are expats. Some of these are reselling her products. Therefore, they see an enormous potential. Salsawit has a hunger for upgrading: she wants to have more financial and social profit because through the creation of hundreds of jobs within the Art Gallery.

Salsawit asked SharePeople for assistance in two phases: first with finalizing her business plan. Secondly, she applied for assistance on marketing to target the European and US market.

Results

Analysis

Most of the time, Salsawit and Nancy worked on improving the running business, especially by focusing on the cost mechanism: what products are most profitable and can become "champion" products. Also, there was focus on what sales channels to use best, nationally and internationally.

Advice

Nancy assisted Salsawit with writing the business plan. However, Salsawit still needs to finalize all financial data (like production costs and turnover per product). Nancy will contact some potential sales contacts in the Netherlands for Sal Art Gallery.

Impact on the partners

For Salsawit, it became clear that business management can be more structural than looking for opportunities. For Nancy, it became clear that she works in a structural way and was challenged in working in an environment where less agreement is made.

Follow up

Happily, Salsawit has become mother of a baby boy last February. Therefore, the business has gone slow. The results of the business plan will be monitored in the second half of 2010.

This is a start of a two-year partnership between SharePeople and Sal Art Gallery. Both organisations will keep in touch, and with the expert as well. After this Expert Programme, an official evaluation takes place every 6 months. With this information, another Expert Programme is one of the possibilities to boost the organisation if needed. Participation in a yearly SharePeople Experience Week is also an option