My Greatest Learning Project Since Graduation (Part 1)

 

It has been three years since I came up with the idea of setting up a social enterprise, 2 years planning for it and 9 months since incorporating and actually running it. Whilst I am still terribly preoccupied with day-to-day running and frantically finding business, I've recently felt the need to re-visit and reflect more deeply about these questions:-

Why social enterprise?

What social problems do I want to address and what is the impact I want to achieve?

Why do social enterprises fail and what is my learning so far?

I must admit I had a really rosy picture when I first came up with the social enterprise idea three years ago and I could still remember how passionate and eloquent I was pitching and preaching this idea.

I never dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur, let alone a social entrepreneur. I guess every social entrepreneur has a kind of lovestruck story. Destiny found them and showed them a social problem which touched their heart and soul and they coincidentally had an innovative idea for a solution, and there goes a journey to the deep end...

In my case, it was company factory closure in Hong Kong, an empowerment programme which I ran for a large group of sewing ladies and subsequently close friendship with some of these ladies which, enabled me to see their passion and potentials.

Why it was a social enterprise was straight forward. There was no room for survival for mass scale garment manufacturing in Hong Kong since the 80s. If there is a reason for garment sewing to exist, it will have to be something which Hong Kong has a competitive edge and is worth the high cost. But that alone is not enough, having a setup as social enterprise has other incentives for corporate customers. Corporate customers through doing business with us, work with us to address a social problem, or more specifically, they work with us to empower a disadvantaged sector of society.

When I first met the sewing ladies three years ago, they were in their 40s to 50s. Some of them, in addition to having good sewing skills, also had management experience in small factories back in the late 80s. The social enterprise project is intended to provide an opportunity to enhance their garment making skills, to enable to them to make a living using their craft, and to foster entrepreneurship. It also aims to address a need in the market whereby designers often have the need for sample making and small custom made orders which require good sewing skills and short turnaround time.

While I was pitching the social enterprise idea to big companies for support, I accidentally stumbled onto a discussion with some of these companies on corporate uniforms. Hong Kong's economy is heavily supported by the service industry and the amount of uniforms worn by corporations every year is enormous. These uniforms are also replaced and disposed of regularly. Since our landfills are soon reaching full capacity and there are talks about waste disposal levy, corporations are interested in exploring sustainable textile solutions rather than contributing to the problem.

The second component of the social enterprise is to create sustainable textile products using recycled materials from corporate uniforms. Seeing this humble little innovative idea turning into prototypes gave me a lot of satisfaction, but that was only the start of a long journey of logistical nightmare...