Eskimos On An Ice Cooling Venture
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday August 6, 2018 18:00
Speaking to Monitor Business, one of the founders, Zynne Mmolawa said that as they grow old they realised that they cannot only focus on music and decided to explore other opportunities.
“We did a lot of research and put a lot of things in to consideration because we wanted to venture into manufacturing. Looking at our weather, we decided to produce ice pops and juice under our brand,” he said.
According to Mmolawa, they then approached Ministry of Youth Empowerment Sports and Culture Development for funding which was successful. They then bought machinery and started producing on a small scale as well as participating in trade fairs as a way of marketing their products.
In 2011 Cool Eskimo Ice was incubated at LEA’s `Pilane Incubation for five years where they were offered free rental space, monitoring, training and mentorship.
“We were fortunate that LEA offered to incubate us after they identified us during the 2011 Trade Fair where we scoped position one. For the five years under their incubation, we were trained on marketing strategy, accounting, they even monitored the performance of our products in terms of penetrating the market,” he said.
Currently, Cool Eskimo Ice and Juice is sold at wholesalers including all Fours’ Wholesales in Gaborone, Lobatse, Selibe Phikwe and Maun, Trade World, schools, just to mention a few. According to Mmolawa, the response has been overwhelming, noting that they have even small businesses that usually buy in bulk and sell at their shops and tuck shops.
“We are very pleased with the reception. The only major challenge is the season because during winter we hardly make any sales, but once it’s over we back to business again,” said Mmolawa.
He said that rental space is also affecting their business as it consumes all their profits. Mmolawa further shared their dreams of expanding their business into the beverage sector, focusing on energy drinks and yoghurts.
He urged entrepreneurs who are fortunate to get the incubation to embrace the opportunity as it does have results and can help one to penetrate the market.
“Some incubated entrepreneurs do not usually appreciate LEA’s intervention and think they are controlling them, but in actual fact their intention is just to help us to be market-ready to play with the big guys,” he said.