How to open a shop in a week

*picture caption: Opening of the shop early morning before the fresh products arrive. Still missing: A slightly bigger & more professional NEMACO sign

A short story from Madagascar

Working in developing countries, among them Madagascar, has both challenging and fascinating aspects. Many activities involving signatures, contracts, bureaucratic procedures, administration can take…undefined amounts of time and often entail frustrating and arbitrary processes. But then there are these unexpected pleasant surprises when something is done so quickly that you can hardly believe it could be this easy.

One example of such a pleasant process was the opening of our NEMACO shop in Tuléar. We had just begun our fish operations in the rural fishing villages and were bringing the fresh seafood products to Tuléar once a week. Some products NEMACO delivered to clients, some got picked up at our NEMACO office. The pick-up activities led to tensions, as we share the office with the WWF team. The location smelled like fish, it became a marketplace with clients coming and going, and the small fridge we had could not hold enough products plus it overwhelmed the WWF’s solar power system.

Hence, we needed a solution to these problems. Not even a week later we opened a NEMACO shop. Vola, NEMACO’s director, sought out an available market stand at a local market square. The booth is located in a strategic position when coming from the harbor and at the same time central enough for passerbys. The stand costs us USD 16 per month. It provides electricity, running water, has room for two coolers and a counter to sell NEMACO products to our customers. Vola quickly found an operator to work at the shop. She makes sure the products are correctly stored and takes care of the sales.

Although we will soon need to move into a location with more storage space as our volumes are growing rapidly, this little shop was the perfect spot to start. Within less than a week NEMACO had a clean and professional place where our clients can always come by to find fresh seafood and that helped us reach new customers by being more visible. If only it would always be so simple and efficient…

Source: nexus ch