Meeting Consumers Where They Are: Evolving Business Models for Market-Based Sanitation in Ethiopia
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USAID’s Transform WASH (TWASH) project takes an innovative, market-led approach to creating effective, consumer-centric sanitation products and services as well as robust supply chains which provide economic opportunities to women and youth. TWASH prototyped, tested, and adapted business models for sanitation service delivery. The approach evolved from a single model focused on manufacturing of concrete toilet slabs to multiple business models addressing a variety of financial and operational capacity needs of different service providers. This evolution necessitated the development of new products and the promotion of new skill sets among service providers, such as door-to-door sales.
TWASH learned from the many challenges faced by previous sanitation marketing efforts, including lack of diversified product and service options, huge transaction and delivery challenges, very low sales, cumbersome product manufacturing, and products highly sensitive to the price of construction materials. Each of the challenges presented opportunities to design and prototype new product and service offerings that better suited the needs of customers. To date, four successful business models and business profiles have emerged, more than 500 business partners have been established, and over 20 products and services have been introduced in Ethiopia...
Speakers:
- Dagim Demirew, Associate Director, WASH Business Development, TWASH
- Monte Achenbach, Chief of Party, TWASH
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