Making Clean Deals in the Soap Business When Moumouni Konate was laid off from his job of 18 years, he took his meager compensation package funds and directed his ingenuity and skills to establish a viable business in Burkina Faso. His small soap company, Savonnerie Parfumerie de Houet, is now over a decade old. Konate realized, “Soap is good choice because this is a country of dust and heat. We always need to wash ourselves and our clothes. Anyone is capable of paying me 5 Francs for their soap needs.”
that the more upscale hotels desired more than just bath soap. They wanted other well packaged and reasonably priced bath products, such as shampoo and body lotion. Determined to serve their needs, Konate located an Ivorian company through the internet, capable of providing him small plastic containers for shampoo and body lotion. “That’s when the four-star hotels began expressing interest,” said Konate.
Constant ingenuity and high quality
When he first began producing soap, they were handmade, using locally produced shea butter, a popular ingredient in the West African market. But, determined to make the highest earnings possible, Konate soon realized that mini bath soaps was his most profitable product.
helps a small manufacturer overcome hurdles to selling locally-
“Today, I am investigating ways to bottle my own products, using our own equipment,” said Konate. He is certain that once he does this, he will eventually lower his production cost and obtain additional customers with the larger hotels.
Through the support of a nongovernmental organization, TechDev, and the shea-oriented French company L’Occitane en Provence, Konate discovered another Burkinabased company, CITEC, which generously shared an improved soap formula with him. CITEC now also supplies Konate with high quality raw materials for his soaps.
made shea soap.
“I thought to myself, ‘Who uses the small bars of soap most?’ and quickly realized that my best customers would be hotels in Burkina Faso and Mali.” In search of new customers, Konate methodically approached all the hotels he knew. He emphatically promised managers that he “can produce high quality bars of soap embossed with the hotel’s name for much less than the foreign companies charge for cheaper quality imported soaps.” He also reminded them that foreign soap companies required minimum orders that far exceeded the 2 to 3 thousand small soap bars Burkinabe and Malian hotels could afford to purchase at one time. As his customers increased, Konate discovered
Konate’s latest challenge is to further expand his market by convincing the international hotel chains operating in the sub-region to use locally made products. He hopes to encourage national policy makers to promote locally made products and persuade the large hotel chains that their customers will appreciate and prefer the locally made soaps over costly, low quality imports.