AUTHOR: Nancy TITLE: Ecocina stove in South Africa? DATE: 2/20/2009 06:54:00 AM ----- BODY:
February 20, 2009

Today I met with a South African brick factory owner who is very interested in our stoves. His factory currently produces 500,000 bricks per day, so it's a big business. The clay source is a quarry on-site (rather like the factory in China) and the kilns are enormous (as in six blocks long or so, and there are multiple kilns). They supply bricks for this entire area.

The factory was started by his father and is very successful. The family is very philanthropic and to my surprise, the owner had, two years ago, designed his own stove for a few of his workers. He's 35 years old, charming, and anxious to begin a stove project with us. My host tells me that people in business here in South Africa have asked for "upliftment projects" so he feels financing may not be a problem.

When I finished my presentation of our stove he wanted to know what was the next step, and I said it was to connect with our stove designers regarding tiles and molds. I have the feeling that if he could, he'd start immediately and spread the stove all over Africa. Click here to see the blog they've started.

What was most interesting to me was their idea of stove distribution. No problem - they have worked it out with, of all things, the funeral service people. Because of AIDS people are dying rapidly, but there is a culture of large, expensive parties for funerals, and people in the townships save for them monthly. When someone dies, they have a big party, and some of the money (and, in the future, a stove???) comes back to them like life insurance…who knew?

Business plan? No problem - one of my hosts is a web developer and marketing guy. He plans an African website and will make contacts throughout Africa and wants this to go big. Accounting? These guys are in big business, so that shouldn't be a problem. They're already talking about costing, etc. Price of the stove? That's my main worry…who knows?

Tomorrow we're going to the crocodile farm, but today was definitely a productive day!

Nancy

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