Botswana Quality Baskets - Maun - Botswana

Thitaku Kushonya started weaving baskets over 41 years age. She has become a Master Basket Weaver and has helped many hundreds of women to weave baskets with improved designs and quality.

Mma Kushonya was born in Etsha 7, Botswana, along the western side of the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. Her early business experience was with the Botswana Christian Council at their Etsha Craft Retail Shop. She also worked for 4 years with Conservation International training women of northern Botswana to improve their quality of weave and design, along with how to look at baskets as a business activity.

Thitaku has won many basket competitions and represented Botswana, both at home and at International Trade Fairs – Washington DC, Atlanta, Santa Fe, Capetown, Windhoek, Madagascar and Disneyland. Her entrepreneurial business spirit makes every activity she participates in a learning experience for herself and those who are participating along with her. She internalizes the concept of life long learning and business progress and growth.

Since 2001 she has developed her Botswana Quality Baskets shop into a thriving rural business and recognized brand in Maun, Botswana. Many customers who have visited her shop have found the experience to be one of the highlights of their visit to Botswana. The most dedicated customers are the one’s who have had the time to take the half day Introduction to Basket Weaving Workshop, where they learned how to start making a basket for themselves. It is also a brilliant introduction to Botswana culture.

To those of us who know her, Thitaku Kushonya is a cultural icon who embodies and expresses through her works and actions many of the best values of Botswana Culture – cheerful, industrious, welcoming and helpful. Did I mention her great sense of humour?

3. Purpose: To Develop and Implement eBotswana Quality Baskets

The time is right for Thitaku Kushonya to open a new shop – eBotswana Quality Baskets. The ways business can be done have changed dramatically in the last 15 years since she started her shop. We now have business platforms that allow Thitaku to create an internet version of her shop to sell her products to a much wider market than just the customer who visit her shop. Bricks and mortar have been replaced by electronic versions of the old business model. With a smartphone, laptop and iPad, Thitaku can be in contact and direct communication with customers from around the world.

An electronic store can be created on the internet and backed up with a marketing mix of tools to help market the baskets to the world. She goes to the world rather than waiting for the world to come to her. A coordinated presence can be made to market the eShop with a Website, Blog, Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Instagram sites that take her products and messages to a much wider audience. With the spoken word, printed word, photos and videos of work going on in Maun, we can make local products and activities available to a world wide audience.

Botswana has the quality infrastructure to support this project and help assist the success of its implementation – reliable electricity, internet, shipping and banking systems. Developing this project successfully can prove to be a model for other rural businesses in Botswana to follow.

The key ingredients are first and foremost a successful entrepreneur like Thitaku Kusonya, a quality product with a history of Sales, a quality electronic store and a coordinated marketing mix on the internet to attract customers who are interested in baskets, how they are made, who makes them and are interested in buying baskets. With our marketing mix on the internet we need to develop and be recognized for authority, trust and quality. That is how we gain search engine recognition and ranking, primarily on Google.

Crafts.