[Stoves] GACC Webinar coming up in less than 10 hours

[Nikhil Desai]

Ron:

I'd like to echo what you said and add few notes of mine, I think all from
Oli.  Please do not hold him responsible for my scribbles.

I am impressed that they moved to a "durable goods company", much more than
"cookstoves", things that "improve life." (Yes, remember General Electric
slogan - Brings Good Things to Life, or something.)

a. Market conditions vary -- in Kenya, $40--45 price point for their
version(s) of charcoal stoves, whereas in Uganda, Willingness to Pay at
$11. (I happen to distrust WTP surveys; users have to see and use what is
offered. GIZ has been running cookstoves program in Kampala for perhaps 20
years, and maybe they do have stoves of desired performance in that low
price range. Or charcoal prices in Kampala are consistently lower than in
Nairobi or wherever else EcoZoom sells.)

b. "Need 35-37% gross profit margin to not have to worry all the time". I
endorse this; depending on inventorying cost - for their solar lights and
water appliances - and minimum container/half-container order requirements,
pricing may have to start at 50-70% above the landed-to-the-warehouse
costs, then adjust as new models come in or the need to clear the
inventory.

c. Donors keep asking expansion strategy, etc. and what we might say about
flexibility in business operations, that is not what people want to hear.
This is a valid complaint. Too many "donors" sitting in rich country
capitals have bookish notions of how a retail business is run in the
developing world, and new donors want to make a big splash showing
"results", when they don't really know what the customer is looking for and
why, and how reality changes from one year to third year. (This is not
about any donor in particular, just general impression of the top-heavy
thinking donors need in turn to sell their success to the rich country
media.)

d. Some charismatic people start social entrepreneur business and raise
quite a bit of grant funds, but end up failing in business terms. (Again, I
have seen some of this in solar business.)

e. Grants are a double-edged sword. (I agree, and have been bothered by the
intellectual and reporting dynamics. There is no clear answer. I would
rather devise a government subsidy program with a five year combined
innovation and marketing plan, and take risks market participants cannot
take. Again, a problem of defining the market, selecting product designs,
etc. etc. that we are all aware of.)

Hope this helps.

Nikhil



On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 4:18 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> List:
>
> This is a brief summary of today’s GACC webinar.
>
> It was almost entirely based on a report from May this year, totally
> unrelated to stoves - that can be found at:  https://static.
> globalinnovationexchange.org/s3fs-public/asset/document/
> FINAL%20Scaling%20Pathways%20-%20Pivoting%20to%20Impact%20(5.11.17).pdf?
> FUAG78FHtelgEUrQzC26YVmcN8apeovu .  The producing group and the author’s
> names are there - again, not stove related.
>
> Two Principals at a young growing stove company (EcoZoom - headquartered
> in Kenya):  Amanda West (one of 3 founders, now at Mercy Corps  and Oli
> Raison (the present CEO) alternated back and forth on different aspects of
> this report.  They especially concentrated on five roadblocks summarized in
> this figure I took from the report.  Amanda (leading off) and Oli spent
> more than 5 minutes on each of the 5 topics - mainly concentrating on the
> EcoZoom experience.
>
>
> I thought the two webinar stove participants were exceptionally good.
> EcoZoom (about $2.5 M/yr) has a portion of their business on solar lamps,
> which was especially interesting to me as I was a Board member of such a
> company (In Namibia) that clearly had many of the growing pain issues I
> heard this AM.
>
> If you couldn’t hear today’s message (sponsored by GACC, but minimal
> participation by GACC staff this time) I recommend the webinar much more
> than the above-cited report.  The GACC site for the webinar, when it is
> ready, is likely to be http://cleancookstoves.org/events/414.html
>
> You might also get something from these sites:
> https://scalingpathways.globalinnovationexchange.org/
> resources/scaling-pathways-pivoting-impact  (where Amanda’s name also
> appears) ,
> https://www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files/Mercy_
> Corps_Social_Venture_Fund_Overview_May_2016.pdf ,
> http://skoll.org/contributor/amanda-west/
> and  https://ecozoomstove.com/pages/about-us .
>
> Ron
>
>
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