Small businesses benefit from branding workshop
ALEXANDRA - Small businesses in Alexandra fail to reach their potential because of lack of skills and branding.
Small businesses in Alexandra fail to reach their potential because of a lack of business skills and branding.
This was revealed at a start-up workshop attended by 11 young entrepreneurs at Ikemeleng Youth Centre and conducted by Itumeleng and Thabiso Sebata of Start Up Media.
The workshop is part of a series of ongoing monthly training sessions to help improve operations of small, micro and medium enterprises in townships. The facilitators plan to extend the workshops to other Gauteng townships and provinces.
According to Thabiso, most businesses in Alexandra are survivalists and have no strategies for growth and development. They are not creative, have no long term growth strategies, don’t understand the value of marketing their products and services, tend to compete for everything, and don’t understand the value of collaborating in order to maximise their customer base and income.
“Our training is tailored to help them brand their products and services, and to develop marketing strategies to help them withstand competition from any new entrants to the local business environment,” added Thabiso. “For survival they need to know how to profile themselves against competition and low pricing from mainly savvy foreign entrepreneurs, who order products in bulk to benefit from discounts thus enabling them to undercut local businesses.”
He said this strategy had resulted in many local business closing down instead of reworking their strategies to continue in business. “Some of the looting and burning of foreign-owned shops is our local businesses’ failure to adapt, learn and apply new business strategies.”
The workshop trained the participants on product development and promotion, pricing, communication, business etiquette, access to finance, development and use of websites to access business opportunities, and adherence to legal requirements for business operations such as taxation.
Details: Mpho Modise; 076 082 1636
