Tailor and designer, Catherine

Catherine wants to expand her business in designing real daily life African fashion and sewing baby suits. She is happy that Jacana wants to guide her in this process.

€ 2,000 raised now, still € 0 of € 2,000 needed. 100%

Expert Le Tran

Mrs. Catherine Banda and Jacana are very happy with the excellent work of “E-volunteer” Miss Le Tran. She graduated at Arizona State University, USA. Currently. Have a look at other work of her at: http://www.letran.design.

Catherine K. Banda is running a tailoring Business named “Fatuma Tailoring Shop” for more than 11 years. She is married and has four children. Her business started in Lusaka and relocated to Chipata, where her shop is located in Town centre. She is a hard working woman who has managed to employ 5 workers among which 3 are on permanent basis while the other two are on piece work. Catherine is a good designer and willing to learn new designs, with such a desire to enhance her business skills she attended the three days Jacana’s business, financial and marketing training. Catherine wants to expand her business into making baby suits. After the training she realized she needs an expert who has skills in baby suit sewing. Jacana believes Catherine is an enthusiastic and motivated entrepreneur who is ready to grow and become a role model for many women in the area. For this reason jacana has decided to guide her for the full year.

We stopped adding monitoring data after April 2018.

February and April 2018

During the last three months Le Tran (http://www.letran.design) a designer from the USA was involved in designing billboards for the tailor shop and the baby shop and also business cards.

baby

tailor

catherine

Catherine is saving money to go to China to buy all kind of baby things, which she will sell in her new shop. She already tried to sell baby items from China and this was a very good business. People come back and ask for it. She thinks Chipata is ready for this product. For now she is selling some baby clothes, blankets, towels and other things in her shop.

January 2018

Catherine came back end December 2017. She first wants to take some time to start up again. The business went on during the time she was out of the country, but it is always better when the director is back again.

She bought the first baby things for her baby shop. For now in January and February she has a big order from a school in Chipata to sew all new uniforms for the school. After that she will have some money to buy more things for her baby shop.

Catherine combines tailoring with baby shop

July till November 2017

Catherine is out of the country because of family circumstances. Jacana will start guiding her again when she is back.

May 2017

Through Jacana newsletter we found a volunteer who wants to help Catherine branding her company. Mr. Lorenzo Rietveld skyped with Catherine for almost one and a half hour. A lot of things were discussed like:
- Name of company.
- Which colors likes Catherine for the billboard, business cards etc.
- Which font type does she wants to use.
- Logo design.

Catherine got a lot of homework and in June we have a skype meeting with Lorenzo about the outcomes.

Example of color scheme advised by Lorenzo

April 2017

Finally the NAPSA pension arrangements are done. She gave four people a contract.
We sat together to talk about logo, sign board and business card design. We try to find a volunteer through Jacana’s newsletter of April to help her with the designs. She already has some ideas.

March 2017

Catherine is still working on the NAPSA issues. She will contact the manager again to help her out.
The new shop is painted and is located “at the highway” of Saturday market in Chipata. The new shop is close to her other shop.
For now Catherine does not have the baby materials yet, that is why she shifted two of her employees to this shop and work from there.

Catherine’s new shop

Highway of Saturday market

February 2017

During a meeting with Jacana some changes were made in the cash book and opening of a Profit and Loss book.
Dinie showed Catherine how a contract and code of conduct should look like. Catherine will go through it and next time the contract and code of conduct will be printed.
A new shop is found for the baby department.

January 2017

Catherine went to NAPSA and they give her the time up to February 2017 to register her employees.
She had a meeting with her staff to discuss the NAPSA issues.

December 2016

Catherine and her sister came to Jacana office to discuss about the business. The following things were discussed

Contracts for staff. Catherine wants to go to NAPSA (pension fund) and discuss about opening accounts for her staff.
Book keeping was discussed. Only a few small changes were needed. Catherine already keeps her books.
In January Catherine will go and look for a new venue to open a new shop.

November 2016

Jacana had a first meeting with Catherine to discuss about the work plan for the coming months:

In January 2017 Catherine wants to open a new shop where she will display and sell the baby materials. Before she opens this new branch she want to be trained in stock keeping, book keeping, writing contracts for the staff and payslips, register at NAPSA (pension fund).
Catherine wants help in designing a logo and labels for her clothes and baby materials.
The first step will be training of Catherine and her sister in book keeping and stock keeping. This will be early December.

Catherine Banda was one of the most active students during the business training.

Catherine has a busy company with has the potential to grow bigger. Before Catherine gets absorbed with daily routine activities and lose her visions, Jacana wants to guide her for one year so she can achieve her goal.

Jacana is determined to make sure that the improvements are imbedded in the day-to-day running of her business and in the end she will be a self-sufficient, role models to fellow community members, this will result in poverty alleviation in her communities.

To be able to support Catherine we need your financial help. Every small amount is more than welcome. Simply fill in (above) any amount you can afford.