Category Archives: Supporting Namibian producers

2023 – A Most Remarkable Year…

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In the middle of 2023, it suddenly occurred to me that ‘Sew Good Namibia’ had evolved into an established and thriving business, almost without me noticing. I say ‘almost’ because handling the logistical and managerial aspects – essentially my wheelhouse – is now pretty much a fulltime job so I had gradually become aware that these tasks were taking up more and more of my time!

The penny dropped when a shop at the coast approached us to make a range of products specifically for their clientele of crafters, knitters and people who crochet. Up until this year, part of my role has entailed sending out many messages each month to potential stockists to find out if they would like showcase our products, a rather thankless task since many never even opened my DMs! Not only did the Wool Cafe in Swakopmund want to place a large order with us, they also insisted on paying the craftswomen UP FRONT for the custom-made items we sent. This was a first for us in Namibia – all our other local stockists took our goods on consignment, an arrangement that’s not without its drawbacks as in the past things have been stolen from outlets, or have been returned to us damaged or dirty, and it can be difficult to maintain accurate records of the stock held and sold at each store, too.

Not long afterwards, a second shop, the Rooi Dak Padstal run by Barkhan Dune Retreat also placed a large order with us, for which they were similarly prepared to pay immediately. This represents a significant change in our retail model since it is obviously preferable for the craftswomen to be paid for their hard work straight away, rather than waiting months (and sometimes even years!) to be rewarded for their labour.

We now have ten shops across Namibia that sell our upcycled, ecofriendly range. Over 2023, two had sadly fallen away but these were quickly replaced and augmented by others and thus the roster increased in size. Some outlets are very small and only shift a few items occasionally but it’s important that we maintain a presence wherever people looking for ‘local-is-lekker’ gifts, especially, might see our products and decide to make a ‘Proudly Namibian’ purchase.

Fairly early on in the development of the sewing initiative, the two chief producers and I took a decision to keep Sew Good Namibia at a micro-enterprise scale. We had all seen how – when projects grow too fast and too quickly – problems with cash flow, personnel and quality control come to take up far too much time and effort. Nevertheless, during 2023 we decided to hand off the exclusive production of our Budget Book Bags to a new member-in-training – Bianca Beukes – and are in negotiations with a skilled seamstress in Walvis Bay – Loide Kambida – for her to make a new product line of stuffed toys.

For several years, we have sat with an unsold pile of table runners like these. They are an example of something that was suggested to us as a potentially worthwhile product line, but which then failed to sell. Suddenly, however, people can’t seem to get enough of them and they have become a runaway best-seller at several of the stockists that support us.

All in all, we can look back on the year past (as well as at our income statements!) and feel a great deal of pride in how far we have come. We have ceased making fiddly, labour-intensive items, such as pencil cases, which were never a great success, and now just focus on a few things – chiefly bags – that we can make well, and at speed.

We are also now able to make regular donations of fabric we cannot use to schools and creatives (such as fashion students and people who make crafts for a living), which is a critical part of our ‘nothing goes to waste’ remit.

Onwards and upwards into 2024, as they say here!

The WORD has been HEARD?

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It’s now four years since Sew Good Namibia was launched – a long gestation period when you realise that it was back in 2016, when I visited Jakarta for the first time, that I started to think seriously about the impact of Western lifestyles on the global environment and how I could throw my energies into trying to live more sustainably, and get my fellow Namibians to do the same.

But when I began approaching local businesses and private individuals in Windhoek to share my ideas about turning waste into high-quality products that could be sold to improve the livelihoods of our poorest citizens, I sometimes felt as if I was talking in Martian or Klingon…

Cut to 2023 and it seems as if finally, finally, the message has begun to sink in here. Perhaps it’s the news footage of wildfires raging across Europe, or videos of Cape fur seals along our coastline ensnared in abandoned fishing gear but – better late than never! – it seems as if the country is waking up to the fact that we cannot continue to behave as if the fate of our planet is not our responsibility – individually or collectively.

Thus the last few months have seen a marked upswing in interest with regard to the work of Sew Good’s craftswomen. Indeed we now have six outlets selling our bags and household goods made from upcycled luxury furnishing fabric, with several more poised to stock our products in the near future.

We now receive regular messages from companies keen to supply us with unwanted materials that we can turn into new product lines – such as these burlap and jute coffee-bean sacks that Amory fashions into sets of plant-pot holders/storage containers (which became a best seller overnight). Donating to projects such as our’s doesn’t just solve a logistical problem for these businesses but burnishes their reputation as enterprises who get the ‘ecofriendly’ message and want to support the local-is-lekker philosophy.

I am now looking for a new project that can utilise more of the unwanted waste that comes my way now that Sew Good Namibia has finally hit its post-Covid stride and generates income month in, month out. One idea is to train people who are ending a custodial sentence to make small picture frames from wooden offcuts discarded by framing businesses. And I still want to link up hotels and accommodation establishments with a home industry group that can upcycle guest soaps – as has been done successfully elsewhere.

There’s a long way still to go. Namibian consumers are ready to embrace a greener lifestyle it seems but often they are faced with choices that are a compromise at best. I no longer bore people senseless talking about the scourge of plastic waste and similar issues (although the threat of climate change is one that still only really reaches one sector of the community apparently). But pointing out that buying an imported cotton or paper bag is not a viable alternative to a single-use plastic bag, or that industries that claim to recycle old clothes are often guilty of greenwashing can be tricky if someone is genuinely trying to commit to changing their purchasing habits and you don’t want to demoralise them with buzzkill

But the message is here, and it’s here to stay. I no longer believe that people are just shrugging and ignoring the small steps they can take to halt Earth’s destruction, nor are they suffering from eco-fatigue. The burgeoning green ethos is captured so beautifully in a quote I am seeing more and more online: Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

Playing catch-up

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It can very often feel as if my adopted country fell off the map when the rest of the world started using the Internet for basic transactions, research, entertainment and social communications. Many bills still arrive by mail in a post office box (or did before the pandemic) and – with huge swathes of the country still un-electrified – using wi-fi at home was historically a privilege reserved for the wealthier residents of bigger towns.

Add to that the fact that local competitors to Amazon have never been able to make inroads when packages cannot be guaranteed to arrive safely at a post office, nor is it possible to deliver to an unoccupied house given that tall palisades, electric fences, remote-access gates and large dogs tend to guard even modest homes and whole suburbs can be devoid of street signs – well, a physical trip to the shops or open market remains how most of us still get all our goods.

Coronavirus changed all that. We only experienced one full-scale national lockdown but with international supermarket chains sourcing nearly all of their products from overseas and cross-border transportation completely halted, suddenly the whole country was looking for new ways to access even staple products. And identifying and buying locally manufactured or home-grown goods suddenly became a necessity, not a novel experiment.

A veritable deluge of Namibian online shopping sites offering a ‘local-is-lekker’ consumer experience emerged, as it seemed, overnight. But good intentions didn’t get them very far when minimal thought or expertise went into their design and most fell away just as quickly as they had sprung up.

‘Sew Good’ now utilises an online marketplace platform called ‘Padstal’, set up (full disclosure) by my daughter, daughter-in-law, and a friend. They put many, many hours of work into conceptualising the platform and ‘test driving’ it before full roll out. Therefore many of the glitches that sabotaged their less-professional competitors were ironed out before Padstal started to accept uploaded products from vendors and open for business.

A padstal was originally a roadside farm stand selling all manner of local produce and handicrafts and indeed there used to be similar shops in the malls when I first came here in 1998. The new, 21st-century iteration allows consumers at home to place orders online and have them delivered in Windhoek and the surrounding areas – a real boon when we were all sheltering in place. It also, of course, provides the sort of free exposure and retail support that micro-scale enterprises like ‘Sew Good’ would not be able to finance on their own.

Marketing ‘Sew Good’ products with an online shopping platform gives customers a much better opportunity to view and compare products than we can achieve by posting them on Facebook and Instagram.

It does very much seem as if shoppers are still getting used to the idea… and it will take a while before we urbanites all abandon our habit of the weekly shop in crowded and expensive stores. But for ‘Sew Good’ – and other home-based industries we have been able to introduce to the concept – online shopping has allowed us to reach a much bigger pool of potential clients, who will be able to place automated orders once the economy picks up and people are once again looking to browse and buy non-essential items such as those made by our craftswomen.