Bunā

Despite its success, the Bangladesh apparel industry remains high risk, environmentally destructive and exploitative. Women from climate-displaced regions move in hordes to cities to work for dangerous, unrewarding factories for the production of generic garments, which have been struggling increasingly to hold up against competition from countries like China. This is bolstered by the lack of information and internet penetration among rural women. Meanwhile, there exists a growing demand for high-quality, handmade, sustainably-sourced garments in many developed countries. Bunā connects the opportunity to the problem: teach women at the grassroots level to create high-quality cloth and garments, sell them under a fashion-conscious, quality clothing brand, and make sure the money comes back to the women. We believe that the first step to connecting impoverished communities to the internet is introducing them to opportunities for wealth creation, and systematically educating them, and by extension their families, on the digital world.

We’ve identified a key triad of problems that work in unison in Bangladesh. Climate displaced and poverty stricken women in rural areas move to the city, where they work in exploitative low-wage textile factories. 85% of garment workers in Dhaka and Chittagong are migrants from different regions of the country. [1] No wealth is created and female empowerment occurs in a truly poor sense of the term. Meanwhile, Dhaka’s severe centralization problem gets worse. To surmise: climate-caused dispossession, the exodus to low-value city jobs, and, consequently, fumbling female empowerment. 

Most vulnerable to climate change, the southern coast of the country is inhabited by one-third of the country's population. In 2016, 23.5million people were displaced due to adverse climate changes. Approximately 10,000 hectares of land was lost to riverbank erosion. Agriculture is badly affected - the breadwinners, mostly men, become unemployed as a result. [3]

Thus it falls upon the women to take up the role of the earner in the family.

[1]https://www.theigc.org/blog/barriers-labour-migration-bangladeshs-garment-sector/

[2]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/climate-change-drives-migration-crisis-in-bangladesh-from-dhaka-sundabans/

[3]https://ejfoundation.org/repor...

The women of Bangladeshi rural communities face a distinct lack of wealth-creating jobs, and move en masse to Dhaka each year for low-paid, dangerous jobs. The Rana Plaza tragedy just years ago was not an exaggeration tiding of the current quality of work the average textile worker faces: it was a cold splash of reality. Many of them are naturally adept at crafting and stitching, thanks to them being elements of culture across the nation. Even those who aren’t adapt quickly to such work as seen in projects by CARE Intl. and Pebble Children’s Toys. The group we want to engage directly is women from rural communities. The first step to any kind of empowerment is making sure people can earn a comfortable living; it paves the path for other social development. We believe this can have a powerful effect not just on the women who work for us, but on their families, especially children, communities, and on the attitude towards apparel production and jobs in Bangladesh as a whole.

Our solution is to create a millennial sustainable apparel brand aimed at the western and local market, and connect the demand to a supply chain powered by women from climate affected rural communities in Bangladesh. We want to create a collaborative team of female workers in each area we target, and train them to create our products. Both the cloth and the end-product will be made by Bunā, our label, and will be sold at mid-premium prices to wealthier markets (the USA is our initial and foremost target). A good share of the profit will find its way back to the community, with the rest being reinvested for company growth. By bringing jobs that create wealth to women in rural communities, Bunā would empower women, families, and their children. We think creating good jobs is the first step to any kind of empowerment in communities, and naturally leads to specific kinds of growth (technological, social etc.) if done properly. We also want to equip our workers with internet-enabled cell phones and enable a culture of connection and information among the worker communities we work with.

The crux of our success is the strength of the Bunā brand itself. Truthfully, we only believe our ability to help communities to be as successful as the business we connect them with. That said, we think the feedback can be exponential. Creating the Bunā sustainable fashion brand to be relatable, to have a culture millennials will want to identify with, to be consumer-aware and relevant will require intensive customer research and prototyping. We made the conscious decision of not banking on our operation’s charitable aspect to sell the Bunā brand. The idea of ‘helping’ is a part of the brand ethos, with many touches to prove as much e.g. sending a feature story of the worker who made/was involved in making a certain piece with the order. [1] Broadly speaking, though, we think it’s better to put up a competent, well-executed, sustainable handmade apparel label that also leverages said charitable aspect to add flavour to a strong brand.

[1] In a pilot survey conducted by our team, we found that 87% of the people surveyed agreed that a feature-story of the worker would reinforce their purchase decision and would help make future purchases.

It's true: we aren't inventing handmade sustainable fashion. We're helping key communities, certainly, yet not in any way that hundreds of NGOs come and gone have not. What's innovative? Buna the brand. Buna the experience. Buna, the consumer-centric, feedback obsessed and supremely millennial outfit. We think doing well in our endeavour means running a business with innovation that will make it attractive to customers. Successes such as Warby Parker and Carcel have shown that the modern business can innovate and capture markets by running pre-existing concepts (in our case, socially-conscious handmade apparel) through an intensive and clever brand press (that is a real machine and we have one, don’t look it up). That means designing a business entirely around customer wants, expectations and, perhaps most importantly, culture. We expect months of research before production. We want representative customers to feel possible fabrics, scoff and smile at potential designs and love and hate approaches to brand design. The end result, we believe, can be a truly pro-customer and pro-labor sustainable brand from Bangladesh. No better place is a better home for one.

As explained previously, our solution tackles the problem of climate-displaced refugees migrating to densely-populated cities looking for sustenance. Our solution mainly involves the creation of opportunities in affected regions to mitigate this problem.
The short term change that is brought about as a result of our activities is the return/revenue workers get from each sale, meaning more disposable income for them and their families. The long term change is what follows as a result - rural women are empowered and can provide for their families. They can send their children to school and finally have a chance at wealth creation. Evidence for this change can be seen in the endeavors of Grameen Bank, where we have seen that equipping workers with income leads to better livelihoods. Furthermore, introducing them to methods of effective communication means that they would have the chance to know and understand their value and rights.
Since our work has a direct impact on climate refugees, this would also indicate less migration to cities. A non-direct impact of our work could be the creation of a sustainable garments industry in the country.

We are still in the concept stage and are currently not serving anyone as of yet. In the short term, we plan on investing in market research to understand our target consumers and their demands, needs and wants. We also need to train the rural women in our line of work - the garments we would like to produce and how we would like them to be produced. This would require adequate time to ensure our products’ quality and their premium feel. So in a year, we plan to train and employ around 40-50 women from our selected regions. From there, we hope to have changed the lives of at least 2000 rural women (along with their families of course) at the end of 5 years of operation. [1] We have drawn this estimate based on similar ventures in the country. The figure of 2000 is based on how many workers we would directly hire to make our products. An important point of note here is that we wouldn’t just be changing the lives of these 2000 women, but also their families and extended families. This creates a domino effect and local communities also grow as a result. Furthermore, our employee base would also include more workers involving drivers for transportation, managers at the ground level at production centres, developers for our website and e-commerce, marketing team to develop and maintain the brand persona etc.

[1] https://www.pebblechild.com/about-us/

Bunā’s operations are replicable across many regions of Bangladesh. Numerous communities practice forms of handicrafts and weaving across the nation, and could potentially be taught, organized and empowered. What is not replicable is the brand. The scope exists to bring tens of thousands of women from the grassroots level under the umbrella of Bunā while maintaining the key competitive advantage of being the Bangladeshi sustainable fashion brand. Each woman impacted and empowered results in entire families being impacted in turn. Done right, Bangladesh and its textiles can be identified as far more than ‘clothes made by cheap labour’.
Within the next year, we’d want all preliminary research completed, and the Bunā brand up and functional with a small collection of products available for sale. We’d want a few influencers helping with the brand at this point in the US and Bangladesh. On the supply side, we’d be ideally working with around 40 women from neighbouring communities.
In five years, we’d want to be a leader in sustainable fashion in key markets, with physical outlets at least in Bangladesh and the US. If possible, foreign collaborations with models and a small permanent team of professional designers. In the communities, we’d want to have expanded judiciously across Bangladesh and begin exploring ways to create more social value through the networks we create (seminars, paying for workshop wi-fi zones etc.).

A barrier we might face is communicating with international customers and understanding their specific needs. Another barrier has to do with customs laws and international shipping which may lead to delays initially. This wouldn’t pose an issue once the brand is established and grows.

We will address the issue of communication with our online presence - Bunā’s web platform and its social media pages. Furthermore, since we have a team member, currently residing in the United States, who has a better grasp of the consumer base there and can provide valuable insight as to how we may facilitate communication with our consumers.
We have been looking into ways we could address the problem with customs and international shipping and one such way is a ‘reverse backpackbang’ model - we create a network of travelers leaving Bangladesh to the US. They carry our products with them, and post them to our consumers upon arrival in return for a fee. This is not really a long-term solution but more of a temporary one in our initial stages of operation. This may cause deliveries to be slow, but that may not be a significant issue as 30% of the people we surveyed were willing to wait 2-3 weeks for shipping and a 56% were willing to wait a month.

Currently our solution team has 4 members.

Each member of our team has experience in areas that are key to seeing our concept through. Different members of the team have experience working with non-profits such as CARE Bangladesh and Grameen Bank. We are research-driven, and all of us have worked on research projects, published and unpublished. Fittingly, one of our members works at Nielsen with customer research. We have worked with people directly involved in Bunā’s line of work - CARE has specific programs where rural artisans, from areas like Satkhira (a climate-affected zone), are given the opportunity to make handicrafts and these are then sold to international buyers from Japan, US etc. Moreover, Grameen Bank has been working with increasing the livelihood of rural communities for decades and working with Grameen Bank has provided us with valuable input as to how these communities work. [1] To maintain a sustainable business, a team must also have people with the knowledge of business - two of our team members are junior-year (3rd-year) students from the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2...

Currently, we are not partnered with any organization.

Following the Social Business Model Canvas, we have drawn out the following model,

Key Resources:

Bunā website

Bunā brand image

Skilled artisans

Key Activities:

Scouting and training artisans

Maintaining brand image

Type of Intervention:

Creating opportunities (jobs)

Channels:

Bunā website

Local and international stores

Segments:

Beneficiaries - Rural female artisans

Customers - Well-off, social-and-fashion conscious individuals

Value Proposition:

Beneficiary Value Proposition - Ability to increase their standard of living

Impact Measures - Number of rural workers, increase in their incomes

Customer Value Proposition - Make high-quality, sustainable purchases while helping solve poverty and displacement from climate-affected regions

Cost Structure:

Raw materials

Setting up and maintaining online platforms

Rural production centers

Surplus:

Worker training and development

Recruiting more workers

Increasing product offerings 

Open physical stores

Revenue:

Sales

To start off, Bunā would require funding in the form of capital - to scout and train workers, to set up an online platform with a premium outlook. For financial sustainability and continuing business, Bunā has opted for an employment model where we employ female artisans and train them. The goods made by these artisans are then sold to local and international markets under the premium Bunā label. When thinking of the commercial viability of it all, do people actually want to buy high-quality fashion goods from a sustainable fashion brand? In the pilot survey, we have found that 85% of the people surveyed would likely make a clothing/apparel purchase if it helped climate-affected rural communities.

Tiger IT Foundation was formed by Tiger IT with the philosophy of bridging technology and innovation with societal and environmental needs in Bangladesh and beyond. Tiger IT Foundation continually tries to foster and invest in innovative ways to improve the quality of life in various capacities. We believe that with Tiger IT Foundation’s extensive network and reach in the digital world, Bunā’s existence may be bolstered and various problems in operations may be mitigated with the knowledge and network presented by the Tiger IT Foundation. Furthermore, problems with product identification, transport and SKUs can be easily overcome with the help of Tiger IT Foundation.

We would like to partner with large non-profits such as CARE Bangladesh. In doing so, we gain access to their already-existing network of rural artisans under their care. In a partnership with CARE, we would expect them to connect us to rural artisans, and guide and help us navigate through the operations of Bunā, from procurement to shipping, since they already have an existing framework.