Volunteers Kameron Rezai (left) and Brandon Davito interview weavers in Tagong

Kham Aid enlists MBAs to help nomads

by Pamela Logan
October 17, 2005

Contents:
* The Sustainable Tibetan Communities program
* Volunteer MBAs and their great contribution to our handicraft project
* Selection of handicrafts with the best market potential
* Recommendations for implementation
* Our dream: to build a Handicraft Training and Demonstration Center

This year Kham Aid Foundation has started a new program to help Tibetans in Kham develop their handicrafts and earn more income from them.  This project is part of a USAID-funded program called Sustainable Tibetan Communities in which we are partnering with Winrock International.  Handicrafts are but one component of a total three-prong approach - cultural heritage, rangeland health, and income generation - that will better the lives of Tibetans in Kham.

The Prefecture government asked us to work in Tagong township, a herding area in northwest Kangding county, because the people in Tagong are particularly poor.   One could hardly choose a more difficult place in which to develop handicrafts, for only one generation ago virtually every Tibetan in Tagong was a nomad, and nomads, as a rule, do not have a well-developed handicraft tradition, at least not in comparison to sedentary Tibetans.  We had hoped to support high-level artisans of furniture, metalcrafts, painting or statuary, but Tagong excels at none of these.   Our first task, therefore was to find something - anything! - made by nomads that can be developed into a saleable product.

Last January we were very fortunate to be contacted by the Kellogg Corps at Northwestern University.  They offered to send us a team of recent graduates from the Kellogg School of Management, which is one of America's top business schools.  After a lengthy application, selection, and planning process, the team arrived: five really sharp business minds belonging to Brandon Davito, Cherie Yu, Elizabeth Henning, Kameron Rezai, and Rachael Lester.  We tasked them with looking at all of the possible handicrafts made by Tibetans and determining which ones would be most likely to pay off for the people of Tagong.  We also asked them to suggest the next steps we should take in order to realize our goals.

Starting in early July, the Kellogg Corps team visited stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Lhasa, Chengdu, Kangding and Tagong to determine potential product categories, learn about customer demand and determine product sourcing and pricing.  The team interviewed chic boutique owners in Shanghai, Tagong nuns running their nunnery's convenience store and nomads in high-altitude pastures. The MBAs gained an amazing experience that they'll remember throughout their careers and lives, while Kham Aid gained an invaluable market assessment. We could never have sent the Kellogg Corps team ranging so far and wide to gather this kind of information; one of the key features of the Kellogg Corps program is that volunteers pay their own travel and subsistence costs.

Once in Kham, the team went into high gear.  Assisted by translators brought from Chengdu and splitting into smaller groups, they

·       Visited local artisans to explore startup costs and training requirements for their craft
·       Interviewed leading Tibetan handicraft producers to explore alternative organizational options
·       Interviewed Kham Aid/Winrock staff and local villagers to assess what resources and capabilities existed in Tagong
·       Conducted consumer market research in Tagong to determine the size of the tourist market and determine customer needs
 
Based their research and the stores they visited, they developed a list of twelve basic categories of handicrafts: woven products, sewn products, metalworking, jewelry, furniture, carpets, painting, leather goods, stone carving, paper products, pottery and wood carving.  The Kellogg Corps team then evaluated these products to determine which ones offer the greatest potential for successful and profitable production in Tagong.
 
The Kellogg Corps team discovered that "Tibetan" souvenirs sold in Sichuan are almost entirely something they dubbed "handi-crap" - manufactured mass-produced items, with the same array of goods at every shop in every town.  Few are made by Tibetans and none come from Kham.  Most tourists - especially Chinese tourists, who form the overwhelming majority of visitors to Tagong - don't even look twice at this stuff. "Why should we buy it here when we can get the same stuff in Chengdu?" was a common reason.

Liz Henning (right) and other Kellogg Corps volunteers interview a shopkeeper with the help of Pema Tsering of Winrock International (center).

Using a set of criteria they developed, the team sifted through the twelve types of hand-made Tibetan products, and decided that, for various reasons, most would not be successful in Tagong's marketplace if we tried to teach nomads to make them.  They recommended new designs that can easily be differentiated and will be unique to Tagong, and suggested that we should pursue woven products, sewn goods and leather items for the first phase. 
 
Kham Aid is now going forward with product design, which will be followed by market testing, training, and then placement of the products in local Tagong shops.  We have a long road to travel before seeing the fruits of this project, but are confident that our careful and analytical approach will enable us to conquer the obstacles facing us in Tagong. 

One of the Kellogg Corps volunteers' key recommendations was that we build a handicraft demonstration center where visitors to the region can see handicrafts being made.  The team recommended this path because they found from their interviews that tourists are much more likely to buy if they can meet the artisan and watch the product being made.  We may not use USAID grant money to build the center, so we're seeking funds from other sources.  Not only will the Handicraft Demonstration Center offer a great opportunity to Tagong artisans to sell their wares, we can also use it to hone the skills of our construction trainees who are learning advanced traditional building skills through another program we are running under Sustainable Tibetan Communities.

We have a long road ahead with this program, but we're off to a good start, thanks to the Kellogg Corps volunteers.  Within a year we plan to have products in Tagong shops available for purchase.  I hope that many of you will come and take a look.

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