Innovative ways to reduce poverty and unemployment: from the townships to the shopping malls

I wrote this article while volunteering in South Africa in 2008.

Unemployment is the major hurdle facing South Africa, leading to numerous other social ills in the form of crime, poverty and the hampering of community growth and development. Despite the efforts of the new government, the situation did not change significantly since 1994, and like any other developing country, the people have been forced to develop a huge informal economy in order to try to generate income.  In the major cities of the country there has been considerable growth in the developing of African hand made Craft, including; woodcarvings, hand made jewelry, ethnic furniture and toys. While the origin of this traditional craft is not known, most likely, it developed in Maputoland and Zululand in rural Northern Kwazulu-Natal, in the northeast corner of South Africa.

Wire art is a cottage industry based o hand-craft production and with the products mostly being sold from open street markets and some formal tourist orientated shops and art galleries. Wire art involves crafting art out of wire, beads, tin cans, plastic, paper, and other found recycled items. The young boys of these regions lacking of resources to buy toys, fashioned their own out of discarded hangers, used chicken wire, tin cans and whatever else they can get their hands on to make ingenious toys. In villages and townships today, one can see boys playing with model cars they made entirely from discarded materials. Recognizing children's ingenuity and the products’ market potentiality, older inhabitants of the area began making their own wire creations and selling them to tourists on the streets of the cities. Today, ‘wiremasters' sell their creations not only on street corners and at craft markets, but also in upmarket shops and galleries around the world.  

Starting on the year 2000 a few South African Businesses started to create opportunities where previously none existed, mixing innovation, creativity, marketing, and enthusiasm. Their main objective was to create sustainable, meaningful long-term employment for as many unemployed and needy South Africans as possible. The companies provide craft artists with a workplace, permanent employment, a sense of purpose and access to resources like skills training and personal development. This enables the artists to channel their natural creative abilities into the most African of all art forms. In order to achieve their objectives they had to invest their own personal funds; developing production models, searching for new markets, and advertising their products worldwide to assure a certain amount of monthly orders.

This is the case of a visionary entrepreneur, who started a small company in 2000 with the main idea of giving an opportunity to help unemployed men and women in Cape Town. Streetwires was founded with 2 artists and 3 founders, and has demonstrated to contain a most unusual combination of a profitable commercial organisation with a social development core. Streetwires is a business with a social mission that is tackling the problems of unemployment and poverty in South Africa.  The foundation of the company lies on the four cornerstones of job creation, craft innovation, sound business practices and human capital development. On the one hand, it’s doing the work of a non-profit organisation, providing jobs for local wire-and-bead art craftsmen and women. On the other hand, it’s a thriving business with a healthy financial situation and their list of clients includes Anthropologie, Isandi, Eza, and Claro are some of the overseas customers, in South Africa their customers include @ Home, Woolworths, Tigers Eye and Charles Greig Jewellers among others.  

Using the core tenets of upliftment, sustainability and innovation as their guide, Streetwires is seeking to bringing their diverse skills together and working to build their future and the future of South Africa. Part of the company’s success lies in the fact that it has created specific product ranges for different markets. The primary materials used are wire and beads and the artists create anything from simple key rings to the most extraordinary one-off sculptural pieces – all based on orders received. Streetwires produces small custom ranges for events and corporate branding as well as ranges for retail that provide the mainstay of the company’s income. The Streetwires design collection sells to the high-end design and décor market. The company is establishing the names of its best artists through the Signature range. The Fine Art collection enables top artists to have solo exhibitions where they showcase collections under their own names.

Like their people, each hand-crafted piece is special in its own way, and each one has its own story to tell, while the scope for training, development and upliftment is enormous. In addition, most wire art lends itself readily to being branded, thereby increasing the appeal of these products for promotional purposes and corporate gifts, an area that Streetwires has pioneered.

The craft industry is traditionally seen as a charity sector, notorious for poor systems and a lack of management and marketing skills. But a visit to Streetwires' buzzing Cape Town studio reveals a business based on systems and quality control. A design team works on creating new wire art designs and once these are approved, templates are passed on to the wire crafters who work in teams to reproduce the product. A team leader ensures the template design is adhered to and the products pass through quality control before being released. The business is divided into units based on the different sectors of local retail, such as key accounts, small stores, corporate and export. Streetwires has a unique sales strategy for each sector. This model is giving the opportunity to the team leaders to acquire the fundamentals of business, observe due dates, quality and product development.  Another unique model that the company is using is the ‘co-operative management, allowing the four managers to share the responsibility of a General Manager, guiding the company forward.

Streetwires is the recipient of numerous awards. Schofield won the Cape Times Editor’s Choice Business Personality of the Year award and the 2008 Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award, while the business won the Proudly South African Bridging the Gap award, and the Craft Icon award from the Cape Craft & Design Institute.

The dreams and wishes of hundreds of artist are behind these products, the hope for a better future and prosperity is enclosed in each one of the beads that create a whole and wonderful product. These visionaries have mixed design, art, and old African craft techniques to match the needs of a demanding international market, giving an opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of world that business can do amazing things.