https://www.youtube.com/embed/M142fYeBdM4
there are millions of entrepreneurs and solo business operators in Africa and what Antonia Lorenz is trying to do is to combine this manufacturing power can and capacity in Africa and connect them with the rest of the developed world she's focusing specifically on fashion and ethical fashion at that so these people that are trying to produce ethical fashion uh she's going to connect them with these manufacturers in Africa in a decentralized way using Cardano as well now if you're enjoying this type of content please make sure you work that youtube algorithm give us that thumbs up click subscribe and hit the notification bell and hear more from us soon all right let's get into this interview so let's start off with your 30 second elevator pitch can you tell me and the audience all about weird collective what it's all about sure so wire convicted is basically a platform where we connect international fashion labels to the African fashion industry the African fashion industry is however not very structured and you can't get in there so easily because it really consists of millions of small and micro enterprises which might be you know a small um a small table shop on the side of the road and there are millions of these and we're basically building a decentralized production system um on the cardano blockchain to make it transparent and scalable to raise the standards of these small businesses and yeah connect them to the international market so what we can basically do is we have a training program and a certificate program and they follow the same rules so that we can also get bigger orders and split them to multiple collectives so that we can have a really flexible and modular system got it in a nutshell a little bit longer than 30 seconds but yeah that's absolutely brilliant um i had no idea that there were so many i guess independent manufacturers there i i guess there's like solo business people or whatnot maybe working in families or something uh collectively so how are you going to connect to all of these people and and and group them together to be able to fulfill orders for international uh international fashion houses it's quite a task um so you i mean you can imagine these small businesses that's really how a lot of African economies are actually built so most of them are informal um they you know they didn't find a job a formal job so they had to kind of you know start something of their own and for example i'm now in in Uganda which is uh it was has been ranked like the most entrepreneurial country in the world which doesn't mean that there's a lot of you know um huge businesses but there's actually millions of of small businesses and and the problem with them is that they don't have a big market like they mainly target their neighborhood facebook whatsapp whatever they they can find um and some of them have really good skills like there's a lot of skills programs but a lot of them also don't um so yeah our our idea is really to raise their standards um have built the training program and there's actually a lot of training programs already here which which we can work with um yeah and really build the supply chain um i mean there's at the beginning i thought you know what it's only these tailors really that will be on the supply chain but now we've realized that it's really a lot of different actors um and and what we're doing right now is really trying to map out these actors and these interactions and look how do we actually need to build these interactions um so that nobody can exploit the system in a way so there are for example the producers which we call collectives and these are for example a tailor but a tailor shop but then you also have um like a printing shop so people who print on t-shirts that's also a task that can be taken up or for example you have people who are resellers of materials so materials is like a big another big task um which we really want to decentralize because we want to have a really flexible system i mean we don't want to buy huge piles of fabric because that's what you can do but we can actually use these existing resellers who already buy all of this material and then try to sell it but they can be part of the network and therefore have a much bigger um market and also more security so for example we can then you know um have stable prices so they it's a lot of like a trader mentality here um so people kind of um you know they buy something they try to sell it it's not really organized and we're really also helping them be really organized and um i think it's a it's a really big task we're trying to do because we're basically trying to um formalize and and and bring and organize really all of these millions of actors which can also be then the people who transport stuff like there's so many roles that can be taken up um and we're really trying to organize them and actually just bring them on on this network on the on the blockchain so that all of these transactions are transparent um that there's not so much corruption taking place but also them have more of an overview how much money to have i have actually made because that's they often have no idea about that so it's also a big um benefit for them and uh yeah so the the idea is really that all of these things exist on the ground um they're just peer-to-peer they're just not organized we're trying to do that so what i'm doing right now mainly is um really being on the ground and trying to figure out these structures um and what yeah our cto then does is he takes all of this information from me and we think okay how do these actors really interact what systems can we build what like roles and rules can we build so that we actually build institutions and um yeah an interruptible system that um can then uh really work actually efficiently and decentralized uh but not uh yeah uh like like it is now no it it sounds like a logistical nightmare to to work with all these different businesses and different parts of the system to actually make it all work together especially when all of these people are probably not used to working collectively to form a part of a longer and bigger supply chain i was talking to another person on another interview that was talk about the supply chain processes and even in western or developed countries it's still a mess with handwritten paper notes in from delivery trucks uh you know passing it over to a delivery depot and saying yeah this is what i got and it's just all on paper and no one really has a clue so um you're solving a couple of things you're looking at the logistics and the formalization of the entire supply chain you're making it on the blockchain so that it is visible and people can track and see what they're doing and i guess that's also forms apart for the people that are buying from the supply chain they get to see what's happening as well is that correct exactly so we're mainly targeting fashion labels who are looking for a different way or an alternative way of production so they really want to produce ethically so fair and also sustainable and especially the fairness is is extremely hard to track and this whole production system right now or how you can produce fashion right now is it's either very transparent and really kind of hard to get into especially as a small label which is entry market um or it's really expensive like the only alternative you have to asia is really maybe europe or like um if you're if you're in the states you know this local market but it's quite expensive because just the living conditions are quite expensive um yeah and we're really trying to build africa to to become the the ideal place to produce fair and sustainable fashion um using blockchain so that's really the idea because we see there's so little um in in export being done now and there's many of these very exploitive structures which exist in in in asia in china and bangladesh they don't exist here and we can can really use that but while we scale it um we don't want to build the same structures so so that's why especially blockchain is really doing a lot for us and that's why we think that we're also like um solving a huge problem for for these producers and especially small labels and and we really think that a lot of um people who want to you know produce ethical fashion and who now can't find something on the market which really takes all of their boxes in terms of style and um and also fairness and sustainability and we think that these labels are growing and we want to serve them that's fantastic i i do see a lot more of these labels uh trying and aiming for that ethical part of their uh manufacturing and what they're offering to their customers it's a really good and a different hedge and i applaud you for you know trying to push that side of the market as well but how did you start all this did did you just wake up one day and say hey there's there's a problem here and i think i can solve it i've got it i'll go to africa and and and work it out or have you been living in africa for a while and uganda for a while yes i've been living here for well i've been around here for like two and a half three years um yeah so the first time i was here was like on a student trip actually and it was like an entrepreneurship um startup tour that's what we call it and we really visited a lot of startups and i got a really good insight into the problems and i basically then said you know what let me just go to africa and i decided to to move to uganda for for a while so that was like about six months um and and i didn't have much planned but i was like you know i want to start a business um and that was back in 2019 um just before covert hit um which also made my trip a bit shorter it was supposed to be around 10 months but i learned a lot i i started different projects which also didn't work out in some of them and i really learned a lot and throughout this whole journey um fashion was always a thing that i felt like it was all around me when i was in in east africa like people are very um creative um there's i first you know worked with some of these tailors because i was like huh that's i was just excited i was i just bought some materials and went to them and just made some stuff for myself because i was like oh that's cool i like fashion and i can i can just produce and it seemed so easy um to just go there and and they can make it and they also have you know some some skills of um of the technical things about pattern making and of course the the standards are not like uh like an international uh standard in a way so this stuff is really lacks uh in in in quality a little bit but um i was i was really amazed and and i had a lot of fun with that um and then yeah so that was really the first thing i noticed um just when i was living here and the other thing was really this whole this huge problem of job creation really i mean you have these tiny businesses everywhere and everyone's just trying to survive yeah and i i really my personal view on africa is that i think there's so much potential i feel like a lot of people maybe go here because they think you know you need to help these people but really i think there's so much potential and i was like how can we best use this potential um with the stuff that is already on ground so that's really my my whole idea um how to how to tackle these problems um yeah and then this this idea really grew in my mind um and well i started with fashion because i think it's it's quite an easy entry market uh there is this um this market on the other side who actually has problems producing fair unsustainable fashion so uh it was yeah it was it was a good match but um also in in the future i really i want to produce not only fashion but i think that um this whole if we cracked the supply chain thing uh it would be very stupid not just to use it for one industry but um you know to also produce many different products and really um industrialize um african countries without destroying them and without and fly like without building these same explorative structures great okay so really you're building the supply chain uh infrastructure for industries in africa cool okay not a small task it's it's um exactly yeah so how how are you going to go about doing this it's i know you're on the ground there talking to manufacturers fabric suppliers printers etc and and connecting with them at the moment what about the other side as well and the uh the retailers the fashion labels and stuff are you talking to them and how are you gonna connect uh all the pieces together so we actually have a couple of of clients now um and we go through this process of producing stuff for them and actually putting their ideas into reality at the moment um which is a really big learning process um so that's really the we learn a lot on on the go currently um but at the same time we're also building a product for them because um and we call what we call our concept to the to the market uh we call it ethical fashion as a service because we not only want to produce fashion but we also want to you know support them with the product development and of course the supply chain the fabric sourcing the the logistics and we say that we deliver the transparency and the fairness um at the same time so that's why we call it ethical fashion as a service um yeah and we're really building a platform right now which is going to launch at the end of august um where people we have like a basic line of products um which our producers are trained to do um and on the other side we have um a network and yeah a database of fabrics and materials that we can source from so we're currently building a lot of relationships with the text type producers we now know okay what of yeah in in african countries we now know this is uh the fabrics they produce uh we have pictures of them so we're really kind of building this um this platform or this service for labels um to make it really easy to source that can just scroll through all of the materials um and um produce fashion so we also have building this tool where they can input um kind of their what they want to produce so how many pieces if they already have the technical development done if they want us to do it and based on that uh we're building the system which we can then channel to our producers and our designers and technical designers so that they are actually having a really easy time to put their ideas into yeah into reality um sounds like you've done a lot of work how long has this project been going for now around eight months i think so we started at the end of 2021 yeah the idea has been there um for much longer but um yeah 2020.
It sounds like you have been working hard connecting all the the pieces together and making this happen um what's the experience going to be like are you building like an a visual platform for the the fashion labels to actually uh have a look at these samples because we're working globally here and i'm guessing sending samples around the world is a little hard so i'm assuming you're going to be building a little platform or a fairly large platform i should say where the fashion houses or labels will be able to log in have a look at like what's what's that side of things going to be like yeah so we will have these two products basically um the one is these these pieces that already exist so for example a t-shirt we don't have to design a whole new t-shirt for everyone because a t-shirt you know as a t-shirt so we have these basic pieces which we will probably we will send a couple of samples to europe um so that we can send it from there and this really shortens the time um and then this other product this other product is really them having their very unique ideas um and another benefit for them is that we can also produce smaller order sizes because we have a quite flexible system but um yeah unfortunately we haven't yet found a way around that we do a lot of uh we do send them a lot of pictures so straight from the production actually so for example a client now um we were producing things and i gave these orders to some of the producers and now they've sent me pictures um i'm sending these pictures to her so we can already now do the process a little bit online just because everyone has a smartphone and and we can do that but we really we're going to formalize that process much more um yeah to really um get to this final sample at the end which we can then send um yeah but well you always have to at least send one sample because it's a physical product so people also want to hold it in their hand but we can really do a lot um with pictures already so on the blockchain side of things uh what are you expecting to use cadano the blockchain for like i know you want to use it to show particular records and stuff are you uh planning to you know mark an order and uh put metadata based on where it is like what what's how are you going to integrate it in and what what do you see kadana in the blockchain um playing their part in this whole process yeah um so that side we're really still in the in the beginning um i should say uh for us the transparency um and also in terms of the um payment is really important because when it comes to fairness um it's always important to you know know how how many how much are these people actually getting paid um yeah so that's really one thing that's important um other than that it's really the transparency um that's extremely important to us we're still working a lot on that i'm unfortunately also not the expert in that sense i'm more on the ground i'm also learning um every day um what can actually be done and also what can't be done i know you're working with some other people in fact chris um from merka who i interviewed in a previous podcast put me in contact with you so who's the team that you're working with obviously chris but who else and uh what what roles does everyone play yeah so we're currently four co-founders um i'm the ceo uh yeah i started with the idea then a very good friend of mine um which i know from uh from university she is really into this finance and and legal stuff so she's really working on getting the economics right um which is a huge task and also the legal and the logistics because if you're sending things um you know you have to account for a lot of taxes and all of that stuff but she's really also um involved in so many things it's it's really been like really core to people in a way um and then yeah a good friend and mentor of mine really pushed this idea of of blockchain to us and then we were like all right we need someone um who actually knows a lot about it i mean i i understand the concept um quite well but i mean i i'm not the one who's going to implement it um i think there's people who know that much better um yeah so then we um got chris on board which was a huge huge ad also in terms of how um we're actually trying going to you know build it from the ground up i always knew there was supposed to be a this tech part it was also always supposed to be tech enabled um but chris is really now bringing in this this factor of how are we actually going to do it and of course the blockchain part um and then we have uh gregorin who is really our cmo so she can really um yeah talk to the clients she does a lot of the marketing and and she's also really um interested in the sustainability and the fair um the fairness of the project and really um possibly a social business and not just a business well uh you've managed to get into contact with some really good people and form a nice little team there what's what's your project timeline like like how how far are you from producing something that can be tracked and traced and be completely transparent on the blockchain and be able to present that to clients and customers as well as the locals yeah i would say around probably a year so um as i said we're really using this approach of um starting on ground and figuring out what to build before we start building it which we're doing right now um so i think yeah we're really trying to get the first orders and already produce stuff which is maybe not on the blockchain yet but we know how that process works um we're also at the same time trying to to kind of mimic this decentralized network um on whatsapp so for example most of these producers have whatsapp so we can already you know use all of these roles and and for example build different groups and already get a couple of hundred producers on this mimic platform um and that we're going to do that um probably until the end of the year and my goal would be really to have the first working system on the blockchain in about a year so middle of 2022.
It's amazing that people can run their entire businesses on whatsapp it's it's just one of those apps that i don't use uh people here in australia don't really use it that much i guess we moved off it um but uh i guess for other countries that are i guess mobile based they they're using their mobile phones constantly whatsapp is a brilliant little tool absolutely i mean it's really interesting like this whole um peer-to-peer thing really exists on whatsapp i mean i feel i think it's also been fueled by by the pandemic of course but and for example i'm in a couple of groups with um entrepreneurs and and producers and this these groups have like 500 messages every day of people posting their products people interacting uh and that's really how it works and and what's really amazing and um which also for me shows this potential is when i was uh in the beginning of the year i was in germany for a couple of months but a friend of mine it was his birthday so i wanted to um make him a gift so i was like now how am i going to you know get a gift of something that i want uh and there was this particular group like a female entrepreneurship group um and a lot of sellers and producers were just on there so um i just posted a picture of something that i wanted in a way um which i just got off of google basically and within like two minutes uh like five people were texting me okay i have it where can i ship it wow that's amazing and uh like that's really amazing it is amazing like there's just these people and that's what we're trying to do it's this um this hustle culture in a way of people having their business they're waiting for something um they don't really have a big market and and and the market the local market here in uganda and africa is quite small because the purchasing power is just not so much um so you really have this this hustle culture um and people who want to act on it and and and this this swarm of small businesses who really want to serve you um yeah so that that was really amazing and yeah it's brilliant to be able to tap into that and actually be on the ground i've i've never been to anywhere in africa before so it's it's one definite continent that i do want to get to as soon as this pandemic thing is over yeah sooner or later all right this sounds like an absolutely brilliant project to follow along and get a little bit of update every once in a while so i think i will check in on you and see how things are going and see how business is and see and see what you're actually producing as well i've seen a couple of uh shots on your website um in some like a top skirts and and whatnot are there some of the designs that you came up with yourself yeah so these were really one of the very few first samples um i produced them that was really last year at the end of last year where i really tried to test this concept of can i produce something which is interesting maybe to the international market um so yeah these are really uh you know i bought the the materials and then went to a couple of trailers um and made these things and they turned us on really nicely um which which i was really happy about and we were really able to use these as as our first samples of okay we can produce something and that's also how we got our first clients so it's uh the beauty but yeah the beauty about what i what i love about this project is that it's it's a huge idea and it's extremely complex um but if you really break it down to um starting you can really start very easily which enables us to make these um hands-on experiences very fast and understand our clients extremely fast and yeah i think when we build this this um blockchain model on top of it i feel like then we can really crack uh the scale as well how can people follow the project where can we go to find out more i'm assuming you're on social media all over the place and your website as well uh what are the references for everyone to to tune in on yeah so first of all um the website so wirecollective.com we're on instagram so our name there's also wirecollective um yeah and then also me personally i post a lot of stuff on linkedin i'm extremely active on linkedin and also there the company page um where we're going to do much more there um yeah so these are really the the main things to follow all right brilliant i did follow you on linkedin as well when i saw you post about the uh extraordinary high price of shampoo that you have to pay for locally there in uganda it's uh i guess if there's no demand if there's supply chain issues true true and also this lack of local production i mean all of this stuff is is important because these local producers um they don't really have these standards um to even get into the local supermarkets which is extremely sad and and we really i mean we're really fighting against that and say you know what we're actually going to export this stuff to to the international market um and it is actually possible to produce a great quality here and i've seen people do it like great quality but it's really only very small like a very small percentage of businesses who who have great products the rest is really just there trying to maybe do what everyone else does and we're really trying to scale um this high quality stuff uh to the rest of of these producers i i have no idea how you are going to train all of the merchants not merchants the suppliers the tailors the logistics the the couriers all those people to actually get the logistics done but um it's it's quite an effort on your your behalf you've got the hard really really hard part of it i i think chris has got the easy easy part just building it yeah chris always says that he's he's always like his other like a lot of blockchain projects they're like just sitting at home and coding something like that's not hard just being on ground and like figuring like like physical things out is so difficult and i mean i'm also learning it every day things barely go right um yeah but i mean i i see a lot of i just see all of the components here um and they're just not organized and that in my mind really annoys me in a way because for example there are many many um trainers and there's so many training programs especially maybe from international agencies but they don't train for a real purpose they train for their program and then you know people learn skills that are never really needed or used anywhere so like a friend of mine she she's doing a similar project not tech enabled but the on ground stuff with furniture and she's producing beautiful furniture with carpenters um and like she yeah she's also working with these people who um yeah who train them like these international organizations but she says they're training them themselves of like how maybe europeans did furniture 300 years ago instead of just getting someone in who is like this is the world standard you can reach it and people here also they don't believe that it's possible to produce stuff here which is which you can sell i mean i'm like i had i did this post i was so amazed like i did this post um on linkedin where i where i posted um a shirt which i produced um in Uganda with also cotton so cotton and food material from Uganda um and i posted this and i i've had so many like hundreds of people comment and hundreds of Ugandans say like i didn't think that this was ever possible to have um to have someone like you wear a t-shirt that is from Uganda like they were so amazed um what is possible and i was like yeah so the the mindset also from the locals is really is really uh yeah they don't believe they don't really have the confidence um and i feel like it's it's possible to change to change that if if they just um see the the potential and if they also see um how it's been done in a way yeah mindset's huge it's yeah it's once you actually understand i i guess it comes out up from a lot of education as well and how people are brought up but once that mindset is changed um yeah it really unlocks a lot of potential in people yeah no i was just telling a story where i talked to a friend and they do uh they wanted to do like shawarma and also for for the sake of like youth employment and training of people in the food industry and they wanted to produce shawarma and how like these people organized it was like you know they they had like maybe one um task of like doing the drama was was on this side of the room the other one on the other side and they took so long to to do this this food the simple food basically assembling it um and then they were like you know what why don't we put it in a in a lane of making it fast but still they're very very slow not to do it and then he said the only way that these people started being fasted is uh when he actually showed them a video of some guy in some another country um who was i think doing like 20 dramas in one minute um and then they saw it and they're like ah it's actually possible to be fast and then they were then they immediately they they were much faster because they're like okay actually this is how you do it someone has done it um and so yeah so in their mind it's actually possible they believe it's like oh well if yeah a person can do it i can do it too well okay wow all right uh Antonia thank you so much for joining me on this episode it's been absolute pleasure learning more about the project and more about yourself as well absolutely thank you so much um yeah for for having me here and uh for therefore supporting our vision um it's really great gotta do it like that you've been listening make sure you check out Antonia on all their social media profiles follow the project and find out exactly what's going on it is a pretty cool little project or not little it's quite a large project to follow and it'll be interesting to see how this comes about it's got a really good team i know Chris from Mirqur is working on the technical side of things so it will be definitely implemented well now if you are interested in more of our content you can check out our audio podcast there is a link to it up there that you can find on spotify on apple podcast or anywhere that you listen to your favorite audio podcast or if you want to support our content and our show you can delegate to our staple ada oz where we will be using all the funds to produce more absolutely fantastic and wonderful content just for you so make sure you check that out you'll find out more information at cardanode.com.au but like always like i say please give us that thumbs up click subscribe and hit the notification bell and you hear more from me soon all right gotta do it like that you've been listening to the learn cardinal podcast gotta get it hyped crypto is what we like but this is not investment or financial advice gotta do your research cause it's risky we know it is this show is educational and it's informative crypto's the future really it ain't
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