9/17/2008

Visit to Imalaah

Yesterday, the Wow team visited Imalaah, a specialized massage centre situated on the Avenue Bourguiba, near from Wow office.
This centre that is applying for 5 000 000FCFA (10 000$) to extend its premises is managed by Avelina, who is very skilled and have more than twenty years experience. With a good knowledge of african traditional techniques of healing and massage, the centre proposes three different kinds of activity:
1) Training:
- Two years training in massage designed for girls. And by the end a diploma will give official recognition to the training.
- Intensive training designed for professionals like physical therapists, nurses etc to improve the quality of their intervention.
2) Massage: This activity is presently the most important in terms of incomes.
3) Production and sales of natural’s products made from butter shea, karate, sesame oil and aloévéra. Most of its production is exported.
After describing her activities, Avelina made us known the situation of the business and the purpose of the financing she is asking for.She said she would use it to extend offices so as to raise the welcome capacity.As far the working capital is concerned, she thinks she will be able to face it with the profits of produits sale.
And after a two hours meetings, we left, giving her a new appointment on Thursday for discuss the way to work out the business plan with her.
Amara

9/04/2008

A rainy week at the office






We started off the week with a couple of to-do items for Linda.
We visited Sigil once again. This time to buy some sample bags to take back with me to the US. The idea is that Linda will then be able to show these to WOW advisors and get their input and feedback. He also showed us a new sample of a shopping bag that was reversible. He is still in the process of finishing it and choosing the right handles for it.



We also had further discussions on possible tags / logs that could be put on WOW clothing / bag merchandise. There are two options – to have them printed or to have them woven. The woven tags tend to look neater and could also include some interesting words. The logo attached here with the words ‘GROWING AFRICAN BUSINESSES’ was one our ideas. Currently, Sigil has his tags printed in Morocco. Perhaps it could make sense for us to have these made in the US.


During our conversation with Linda on Monday, we were able to further refine our thoughts on the immediate hiring needs for WOW. Ideally besides the new CEO, WOW needs a couple of more investment analyst / account managers, accountants and a legal consultant. We discussed these roles further with Malick and were able to write down job descriptions for these positions. Malick and Amara gave us the impression that while the skills required for these positions are extensive, it should not be too difficult to find appropriate candidates in Dakar.

Wow currently has 8 companies in its portfolio, most of which have further funding needs. Further, we have been analyzing another 7 companies. The total funding required for 2008 for these 15 companies is of the order of 200m CFA (circa $500,000). We have summarized the financial needs of these 15 companies and will present these to Linda. If we wish to fund 20 portfolio companies, during 2008-2009, WOW should raise close to $750,000. It is hard to predict what these businesses will need in years beyond 2009. What we do now is that some of these needs are fairly urgent so the investment in these companies needs to be appropriately timed for it to have maximum impact.

Ludo visited us in the office today with his design for the homepage. Christian and I went through every granular detail on the page to make it more attractive, appropriate, aligned with the WOW theme. He was very hands on and made the changes as we discussed. He will work on cleaning up the product further so it can be shown to a larger audience. It is still in its primitive stage, however we convinced him that we must show Linda the design so far (even though it is still very raw). I think working with a website designer based in Senegal is going to be challenging - especially if WOW intends to do this going forward from the US. Our meeting today was very, very hands on, and it is hard to imagine how this could take place across continents. The meeting today was exciting and it was great to be able to see a product transform as we gave more and more input.

Karishma

9/01/2008

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