CBI News Bulletin November / December 2005

CBI News Bulletin Page 32 CBI News
Shopping
where
Europeans
shop
Thirty-two Ethiopian export consultants
recently travelled to Rotterdam,
the Netherlands.
Ethiopian Train-The-Trainer
programme well underway
The TTT course is part of a BSO development
programme the CBI is running in
Ethiopia. Its purpose is to enlarge local
consulting capacity. The TTT module
began with a week of training in Addis
Ababa last July, dedicated to the supply
side.
The 32 consultants, bankers and trainers
spent that week auditing six Ethiopian
companies on their export capabilities.
In September the group came to
Rotterdam to explore the other end of
the export line, or to ‘Meet the Market’.
For most of this week they were busy
running around Holland talking to
The two three-day workshops were held
in August by CBI fashion consultant
Louk Grauwen and garment consultant
Hans Hunink, in cooperation with
Pakistan´s Export Promotion Bureau
(EPB). The aim was to contribute to the
development of fashion design standards
in Pakistan, thus equipping the local
industry for export.
The participants represented a large
number of organisations involved in
fashion- and design-related training pro-
Thirty-two Ethiopian export consultants enrolled in a CBI Train-The-
Trainer programme recently travelled to Rotterdam, the Netherlands,
for a week of intensive training and market exploration. There was no
time for sightseeing, but ample time for shopping.
importers, retailers and facilitators and –
in the few hours leftover – discussing
topics of market entry and distribution
channeling.
“There´s no better way of understanding
the limitations of Ethiopian exporters
than experiencing first-hand the highly
competitive Western import business”,
explains ge-neral marketing consultant
Johan Laman Trip, one of the programme
coordinators. “And there´s no better way
to learn about European consumers than
to shop where they shop, to compare
product quality and prices yourself. The
strict quality requirements, the import
grammes. Louk Grouwen, a seasoned
designer and design trainer himself, used
slides and other visual aids to show the
participants how design training programmes
are organised in Europe – the
target market for Pakistan´s garment
industry. He also explained the disciplines
a design student has to master in
order to meet international standards.
He and Hunink also presented a ´fashion
forecast´, which, like most of the other
topics, gave rise to interesting and lively
discussions. “The participants eagerly
regulations, the struggle for shelf space,
the need for efficiency in ordering and
logistics – the Ethiopian consultants saw
it all. And hopefully they´ll be better
equipped to tell entrepreneurs back
home what it takes to become a successful
exporter.”
In October the participants gathered
together to translate the know-how they
acquired into an Export Marketing Plan
(EMP). Says Laman Trip, “Like every part
of this long-term project, this stage
brought us one step closer to our goal:
increasing Ethiopian exports.”
Equipping Pakistan´s designers
A colourful mix of local designers, fashion students, merchandisers, faculty
representatives and principals of fashion and garments institutes
recently attended two CBI workshops on fashion design in Karachi and
Lahore, Pakistan. The workshops were part of a Train-The-Trainer programme
for this sector.
absorbed the information we presented”,
comments Hunink.
In order to make the workshop as practical
as possible, the two consultants set
apart the last day for a full-day design
assignment, developed by Grouwen. “It
was completed with remarkable results”,
says Hunink. During their stay in
Pakistan, Grauwen and Hunink also
visited several fashion training institutes,
to talk with principals, faculty members
and students. Says Hunink, “This helped
us get a clearer picture of the programmes
and standards of these fashion
training institutes in practice.”