Envirofit International Business Model Canvas:

Value Proposition: The main values which Envirofit International delivers to their customer are adoption, affordability, and access. They solve the customer problem of not being able to afford or have access to obtaining the assets necessary to service their own microenterprises, specifically those involving stove-top goods. They are able to cater to the locals’ set of needs by enabling them to gain access to greatly reduce their fuel costs at the lowest possible costs, thanks to their extensive distribution services solving the last mile problem of the rural areas they serve in. In terms of specific individual needs, Envirofit International recognizes the health hazards which open fire stove cooking can have on users, and instead utilize environmentally friendly and safe technologies as another solution.

Key Activities: The main activities of Envirofit International can be best summarized by the visual chart they have on their main website. First, they do an extensive amount of R&D, in order to maintain their main values of environmentally friendly, technologically innovative, and extremely low cost product lines. In addition, they work to design for adoption. This means they utilize focus, test groups, and surveys. This is to make sure that the products they are investing their time and money in would genuinely be impactful and useful for their customer bases. If they brought products which these customers, typically with little to no education, are unable to learn to use, then they are wasting both their own and their customers’ time and money. Next, they work to make their production to scale. Envirofit maintains well-detailed records and algorithms to make sure that they are producing the optimal amount of products, utilizing the optimal amount of resources and labor to do so. Another key activity is their extensive distribution. As noted on their website, they partner with last mile entrepreneurs, local businesses, and international distributors to enlist a team of hard working, far reaching distributors who can come together to have stoves and other products reach hard-to-reach customers, some of whom may be unable to leave their homes or travel to nearby villages. The last two activities are customer relationships and impact monitoring. They have programs to teach their customers the importance of maintaining clean stovetops, then make sure to call and keep in contact to check the impact and suggestions which products have. This way, they continue the relations they have made and utilize these customers to inspire their future innovation.

Key Partners: Envirofit has many partners, including: Shell Foundation, Clean Cooking Alliance, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Business Call to Action, UNDP, UK Aid, WFP, World Economic Forum, and One Acre Fund.

Cost Structure: Envirofit has a unique cost structure, because their website allows you to either distribute their products or buy their products. Their fixed costs are the prices they pay for their manufacturing facilities, distribution (which can be fairly expensive since they distribute so heavily), and marketing efforts. Variable costs are more of the product parts and research and development costs. An interesting aspect to Envirofit’s cost structure is their offering of cookstone carbon credits, in which customers can purchase credits to offset their CO2 emissions, which are used to support the business and can be purchased to sponsor stoves themselves which are then sold to the local in-need markets.

Key Resources: Key resources include the stove fuels (wood, charcoal, LPG), as well as all the stove parts themselves. These parts include ceramic, metal (which brings down costs greatly), plastic, steel, cast iron, and other parts. On top of this, they need their physical resources, or the manual labor going into making these stoves. They also utilize intellectual resources, through their extensive R&D as well as their Envirofit University, where they invest in intellectual property by training customers and dealers in usage and other business techniques to ensure maintained success.

Distribution Channel: The distribution channel is fairly in line with their customer segment, they partner with distributors, dealers, and larger partners who take an interest in their company and then move onto sell the products through their own respective distribution channels.

Revenue Streams: Envirofit’s main way to monetize is the asset sale, whether that be a direct sale or through dealers and distributors. They use dynamic pricing as opposed to fixed
Menu” pricing, since prices are highly likely to change based on the conditions of whatever country they are selling to. On their main website, they note that carbon emissions packages can be customized to individual needs.  

Customer Segments: Their customer segments include direct customers, distributors, dealers, and partners. Distributors are individuals interested in distributing, who would have the capacity to import, purchase, and receive large volumes of Envirofit products to then sell on to other customers they have contact with. Dealers are supposed to be entrepreneurs, small businesses, or retailers who would sell the clean cooking products. These would work through their nearest country office, to see how they can best service their area. Lastly, partners are much larger government or community-based organizations who would team with Envirofit to develop a program together (such as the key partners listed above.)

Customer Relationships: Envriofit maintains very strong customer relationships, to maintain their outreach and get input on where they can expand and improve. Mainly, they provide their dealers with marketing materials, which they ship with their order so they can have greater outreach. Envriofit also have constant call center offering customer service to anyone in need. Dealers or main customers would contact the office if they ever had a problem. A recent innovation which they market on their website is the mobile monitoring which they will soon be using have dealers to monitor and track sales. Also, they offer Envirofit University, and extensive business training program for all dealers and distributors, where they provide training materials for sales agents to learn about the products, usage, and customer market information.

1. One main take-away from Guy Kawaski’s talk is to always keep moving. Kawaski mentioned various challenges, oppositions, and other barriers which stand in the way of any enterprise. Already, Project Plastikan has experienced barriers, including difficulty communicating with the UPD students, or gaining the proper scope of the ecosystem of Paradise Village. By following Kawaski’s advice, we instead need to not let these barriers deter our break-throughs, or hold us back from making progress. Communication is the best way for the Philippines group to keep moving forward. Specifically, the main issues or developments should be communicated immediately through every level of the system, from the main field team, to the UPD students, to faculty, to the SDev group. With clear and open communication, there can be more momentum and collaboration immediately put towards moving ahead and finding solutions to solve the major issues which may stand in the way momentarily. Groupme and email should be utilized constantly, to make sure everyone is being held accountable for their individual roles, and so ideas for how to deal with barriers can be shared quickly. Maintaining strong momentum and enthusiasm, through collaboration on all levels involved (since the Philippines project has many different groups contributing their work) will ensure the most efficient use of everyone’s time and ideas.
2. The second take-away from Kawasaki is to make meaning, rather than to make money. This is extremely applicable to the Project Plastikan, as we are aiming to bring meaning and empowerment to the lives of many women in the Cooperative, as well as anyone in the local community. Granted, we are aiming to bring these women financial stability and provide them with a source of stable income. More importantly, our aim needs to be focused on empowering these women, with confidence, networking skills, a voice in the household, and educational meaning that they could not gain from simply receiving funds. Instead, this concept needs to be ingrained in the workshop with the women of the Philippines, as well as in each interaction held with the women while on the ground. Kawaski introduces the three main ways to make meaning as follows: to increase the quality of life, right a wrong, and prevent the end of something good. In our case, bringing women a way to find income will increase the quality of their lives, through access to education, healthcare, and nutrition. The plastic recycling in effect is the “right a wrong,” and ensuring that women are active members of the project plastikan system ensures that this “good” being created does not end. To ensure the sustainability, we must ensure that there is a strong education that can be carried on by people on the ground.
3. The third take-away from Kawasaki is to get going. Thinking differently is a key element to get going, as we need to think of different ways to reach out and help these women. Most importantly, I believe this is applicable to choosing the product we wish to make through the machinery. As it stands now, the group is still unsure of exactly what product we wish to create with the recycling machines. However, our brainstorming should encourage us to look beyond the basic products, and think differently towards out-of-the-box products which will bring great innovation to the Philippines. In  particular, this may come from the mentioned agricultural products, unlocking the potential for sustainable and improved agricultural processes to be adopted in Manila, if the products are developed such as raised agricultural beds. In order to get going with the project, and further develop our customer base and other ecosystem elements, we must make initiatives on what products we will be creating, by thinking outside the box.
4. The fourth point from Kawasaki is to develop a business model. Clearly, this is extremely relevant for the current projects underway. The specificity of these business models is extremely important for this group, as we need to narrow down what customer group the women should look to when opening their enterprises, to ensure they are reaching the correct customer bases that will show interest and bring in profits. Without a clear business model laid out ahead of time, the field workers would be showing up without a distinct plan to lay out for the women of the Paradise Village Co-op. In the business model, we need to answer the basic producer questions, as in who is involved (the Women of Paradise Village), why we are doing this project (sustainable development, social and financial leverage, etc.), where they will be made (within paradise village- still in need of a specific room layout, dependent upon the final machine system). In addition, the entrepreneur/community questions need to be planned out, which the SDev team is currently contributing towards. Most specifically, we are reaching out to Microfinance Institutions and other UN and Governmental Grants to gain funding for the program. A final piece, which will definitely need to be well planned out before the team travels, is how the system we are implementing will remain sustainable in the long run.
5. The fifth point of Kawasaki is to provide great value to the customer, while creating a unique product. The idea behind the project is already fairly unique, as it creates a combination of social, financial, and environmental innovation for a group of people greatly in need of assistance. Overall, it is essentially important that this value and uniqueness to the project is clearly communicated to the women of Paradise Village, in order for them to fully appreciate the work which they will be taking part in, and to give them a better understanding of our team’s overall goals. These women could easily be offended or intimidated by the changes which Project Plastikan presents to their community, as it will cause disruption to their current professions (or lack thereof) or statuses as oppressed women. To hedge against the risk that women will not be accepting our system, the initial presentation at the first workshop in Manilla needs to clearly demonstrate the goals and potential for social and economic innovation. If we constantly remind the women of the long term value which their work is going towards, they will be far more likely to not become discouraged along the way or oppose our presence.

 

2. BUSINESS CANVAS:

• PARTNER NETWORK: Paradise Village, possibly local MFI partnering.
• KEY ACTIVITIES:
  • Educating women on our mission and skills needed for engineering and business elements of the project.
  • Building and setting up the machinery.
  • Developing a supply chain to receive plastic to be recycled.
  • Creating products
  • Packaging products
  • Setting up markets for women to sell products to
  • Set prices according to time, supplies, local prices, etc.
  • Market to these customer groups
  • Create distribution channel to transport products in a cost effective manner
• KEY RESOURCES:
  • Plastic recycling machinery
  • Plastic waste products
  • Safety equipment and storage for products
  • Marketing materials for women
• COST STRUCTURE:
  • Machine costs
  • Transportation of plastic costs
  • Costs associated with women receiving microloans/microsavings accounts
  • Travel costs
  • Electricity costs for factory room
  • Packaging costs for products
  • Costs associated with marketing business services
• OFFER: Provide women of the Paradise Village Co-Op with plastic recycling machinery to turn excess waste into artisanal/agricultural/technical products. Additionally, provide these women with entrepreneurship knowledge and tools to be able to profit from the correct marketing and sales of such products. Education in both machine usage and entrepreneurship are essential features of the offer, as well as the physical machinery and proper supply chain set up.
• CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS:
  • Maintaining personal relationships with the women to check up on their progress and have any issues and input communicated back to the suppliers (to ensure sustainability of overall system and alignment of needs)
  • Developing relationships between women working together
  • Relationship between workers and outside sources of plastic waste products (“suppliers”)
  • Relationship between workers/entrepreneurs and customer groups they sell to  
• DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL:
  • Local marketing (via posters? Web postings? word-of -mouth? Artisanal shows? Direct travel to homes? Sell to stores?)
  • Utilize other cooperatives with experience in creating and selling products
  • Possible collaboration with Microfinance Organization to assist in financing and developing strong customer base
• REVENUE STREAMS:
  • Possible grants (UN, Government, Bishop’s Council)
  • Microfinance Organizations (CARD Bank, Grameen system, etc.) (we have a full list comprised)
• CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION:
  • Impoverished women of Paradise Village Co-Op
  • Outside Manilla community (also most likely impoverished)
  • Wealthier customers to sell high markup-products to