Positive Feedback

"Now that we have the product, we can’t find the corn to do full testing of our machine (which has a zero failure rate right now). Although this makes things slow for us, and it means that Philemon and I are searching for things to do, it is a good sign, as that means that the season is later this year, and therefore, when our shellers arrive from China, it won’t be the end of the season, but actually midseason for our shellers.

Anyways, today has been a good day. I did a bit of info gathering, in which I visited a few of the bicycle dealers in town. I soon discovered that they get their bikes from Dar es Salaam and have them delivered to them. In many ways, that means that we’re going to have to bring our shellers to the dealers until we actually create a distribution network, which I believe will come from the bicycle distribution chain.

Afterwards, Philemon and I went to find corn. Much to our disappointment, the corn that was there was not fully dry (this is necessary for optimal shelling), but the good news is I’m fairly sure we just won two customers. They absolutely loved the machine. But, I think the greater thing that I gained was the fact that upon bringing the sheller to another farmer, he immediately recognized the machine. He went inside his home, and returned with the hand version of our machine! I was delighted to see this, as I knew there had been a supply chain of these shellers to Tanzania. I was dying to know how he got this and how he paid for this, and he had gotten it back in 1996 from TFA (Tanganyika Farmers Association) for 5000 shillings. I went into a slightly panic as I was like, 5000 shillings? Why can’t we get this sheller anymore for 5000 shillings? But little did I know how much the value of the shilling had changed in a 13 years. 5000 shillings in 1996 was equivalent to about 70000 shillings today. This reaffirmed our price point, and we will probably try to help this guy convert his hand sheller into a bicycle attachment (since it was essentially identical). TFA no longer sells these shellers.

Later, we swung by the office, and it is nearly finished! We negotiated to get glass doors to allow for more light to enter our office, and much to my surprise, the owner of our office asked us, "Do you have agents?" Apparently, in seeing our device in passing yesterday, his sister was convinced she could sell these devices in another region. I realized, in essence, an agent would be an informal dealer, and why not sell these on commission?

So, it looks like we might get agents coming to us, which is a good sign for us."

--

Jodie, Tanzania

Jodie in Tanzania!

Jodie is now in Tanzania, taking over Semyon's successful efforts over the past couple of weeks. We are working on finalizing the design of our product, the universal adapter and cornsheller, as well as figuring out logistical details for housing and workspace. Bernard, the inventor of the cell phone charger, is making 10 samples of the charger for us over the next week to showcase and raise interest. We have many goals set up for us in the near future- but we are entering a new chapter with the founder, Jodie, permanently in the field and Semyon heading operations in the US. Furthermore, we have recently been chosen for consideration in the second round for the IC Venture Fair. Wish us good luck!

--

Caroline, US

Visit to Maasai Village

I took one of our demo bikes to a distant Maasai village a few days ago. Everyone loved the bike, and it worked pretty well except for a problem with the lower sprocket, which was the one part Karam didn't re-design yet. Katya got some great footage on tape.

Here are some pictures from that trip:



I'm off to Nairobi soon, exhausted and overloaded with dust from the 6 hour village trip, having forgotten to bring water or to have breakfast, foolishly.

--
Semyon, Tanzania

First Satisfied Customer!

Our first satisfied customer!

"Global Cycle Solutions was the perfect solution for the Byana Mary Hill orphanage in Uganda. The kids harvest a lot of corn and they bruise their hands when they remove the dried corn from the cob. This solution has not only made the process of removing the corn easy and fast, but we are exploring a viable business opportunity by removing other farmers dried corn as well. Global Cycle Solutions is helping make the lives of the Ugandan people better by providing them with entrepreneurial opportunities and solutions.

Thanks,

David Williams
SEEE Operating Director"

New and Improved Device!

The Karam Engineering team have greatly improved upon our current device.

They worked several of their key people for 2 long days, and have completely re-designed the adapter. It's going to be much stronger, much lighter, and much cheaper to manufacture!

They finished making the first one, and the paint will be dry soon. The next one, which will be a grinder, should be ready by Tuesday.

We are extremely grateful for all of Chris’s help, from bush2beach.com Safaris, from helping us locate Tinco's Karam Engineering workshop to asking them to trust us enough to improve our product development both in speed and quality.

--
Semyon, Tanzania

Meetings and More Meetings

ok, i bought plane tickets so i can make both of the meetings below, as well as the trip to the maasai village if the new design shellers are working by sunday.

sunday night at 8 i'm flying on precision air turbo prop (wish me luck with that one) from kilimanjaro to nairobi, and monday night at 5:30 from nairobi to dar to make the tuesday meetings. i'm not getting a ticket back to arusha yet from dar in case there are more meetings there. but any additional meetings in nairobi monday will have to end by 2:30 so i can get to the airport by 3:30. follow up meetings in nairobi should be scheduled for jodie on the 16th, and i'll mention that during my meetings as well.

all 3 units here seemed beyond repair, the old and the new shellers after 2 days of demos at Nane-Nane, and the grinder which never worked at all. so I asked around and the expat business owners recommended Karam Engineering right here in Arusha. I spoke with the Indian father and son who own the place. They have lots of advanced machines of all types, 40 people working simultaneously all day, and in addition to extensive prototyping experience they are now running a large operation to produce every MoneyMaker pump sold in Tanzania, and gradually ramping up that production as those sales grow. I saw the factory floor where the pumps were being made. It was a very impressive operation, definitely African in appearance in terms of safety equipment and cleanliness, but nonetheless stocked with a full complement of all the necessary machines.

I left the bike with the new sheller with them, as well as a grinder and sample parts from our rahi. They said the design had 3 major issues that they could see immediately:
1. Much of the metal was too thin for holding the unit still and keeping the shaft from bending, considering the forces involved. They weren't going to do real finite element analysis or anything like we would do if we were designing it in the US, but they clearly had the experience to make a much better guess at component strength than we did.
2. The joint between the rahi and the sheller or grinder needed to have a bearing, and needed to be centrally supported in the frame right at that bearing, in order to once again keep the axis from eventually driving the upper gear out of alignment under the full force of the shelling or grinding.
3. The design had to accommodate different size shellers and grinders, and the ability to more easily switch devices.

They said that the current unit we showed them could not be repaired, and I agree strongly after watching Chris mess with it for a whole week. On the plus side, they said they'll have a preliminary design for us and a working prototype in 2 days, in time for the peak of Nane Nane on Saturday, and possibly for our Maasai village trip on Sunday. If they pull it off successfully and get us out of the jam we're in, I'll ask them to re-build the other sheller and grinder demo units next week, and if they succeed with that and give us a fair price, I will ask them to build all 30 shellers and 10 grinders that we currently have (or Jodie will if I'm gone by then).

In other news, the lawyers are now promising that the corporate registration papers will be finished tomorrow, and they are apparently sending people to Dar next week for some other reason, so they may be willing to file them for us for a fraction of the original $1500 they asked for. I don't feel like this is a rush, but it's nice to get it out of the way, so that Jodie can open a local bank account, and look for office space in Arusha as soon as she arrives.

--
Semyon, Tanzania


Summary of meetings for Semyon coming up:
MONDAY
- Rockefeller/AGRA
- Acumen Fund

TUESDAY
- NMB
- Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives
- METL