Beads string together the lives of rural women
Beads Perfume recently had a lucky draw where lucky distributors won starter packs for their own businesses. Read more about how local businessman, Cobus Pieters developed Beads Perfume.
MBOMBELA – Cobus Pieters developed Beads Perfume based on the premise: How can we make a real difference in the lives of less fortunate people?
It took him some research to land on the idea of generic perfume, but with a real 20 per cent oil content added. “Most people add two to five per cent, and it just evaporates.”
One thing he knows about African communities, is that when you have a good product, everybody knows it, and when it is bad, the same network soon cottons on.
“Rich people can buy what they want. Middle class people buy no-name brands. If it isn’t great, I can buy another cheap one. Poor people can only buy once, so they look for quality.”
Beads Perfume offers the buyer and seller just that. The buyer gets a high quality product and the seller earns money.
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“If you run a small shop, you can make R1 profit on this or 50 cents on that. With this, you can make R50 per items sold. Perfume is a status thing. People who work want to smell nice, and they buy from the woman who has nothing.”
They purchase the top quality from the actual brands in Europe, and call their versions “Inspired by…”
The brand is Africa-inspired.
“When Afrikaans people don’t have money they bake and sell koeksisters. Indian women make samoosas. Black women make bead work.”
Their model seems to be working. Since rolling Beads out in November, they have acquired 200 distributors, according Pieters’ mother, Johnita Coetzee.
They have also lowered the initial inset costs to only R200, and distributors later receive rebates too.
“Beads is about how you can make it affordable for someone else to start their own business,” Pieters said.
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