Friday at the office

We spent more time on Friday identifying good products for the fund raising activities.
We visited Sigil – a clothes and bag designing company. They make very trendy products using Denim and other fabrics. They showed us various samples of bags / purses at different price points that could be used for WOW fundraising. We could attach a nice WOW tag to these products. They will also help us deign a WOW tag for clothing, bags etc and will get back to us soon with a quote for the designing.



The founder of Enterprise Bracelet (Sini) paid us a visit at the office. She had samples of beautiful necklaces and very cute dolls with her – more products that we could use for fundraising. We asked if her products – necklaces, bracelets, dolls were replicable in larger quantities – and she assured us that it would be possible. Sini is extremely reliable, friendly and enthusiastic about working with us.



The lady from Benn Loxo also came into the office on Friday. Amara had a long discussion with her regarding the analysis that has been done. She maintained that the projections for revenues and costs in the analysis are accurate. She also re-iterated that a loan for her would not be sustainable unless WOW increased the term of the loan to 10 years or reduced interest rates and increased the grace period.
Today, we had a good discussion with Malick about staffing needs for the office – especially once the interns leave and he is the only person here besides the CEO. He expressed the urgent need for 1-2 more investment analysts – people to do work similar to what he has been doing. He hoped they would come equipped with knowledge of fashion, retail, food processing, value chain management – thus adding to the expertise of the WOW team. He envisions that these analysts would work at the office and also on the field with portfolio and potential companies. He also expressed the need for a full-time accountant for WOW who would also be responsible for liaising with the portfolio companies regarding their timely payments to WOW. Finally, he mentioned we needed a legal advisor for contract issues, though this could be done on a part-time basis. He hopes that an operating manual that documents each person’s role in the organization is created – perhaps one of the first few important tasks for the new CEO of WOW.
Karishma