Accelerating Quality Jewelry Production in Kabul

A FIRM WITH GLOBAL EXPERTISE AND LOCAL PERSPECTIVE. McColm & Company is a boutique management consulting and strategic advisory firm with global expertise and local perspective. We deliver insights and design solutions that overcome our clients’ challenges and advance their interests across the globe or down the street. We serve governments, businesses and institutions.

WE GET YOU WHERE YOU WANT, AND NEED, TO BE. We work with our clients to streamline systems, develop critical skills and build the right relationships – perfecting performance and advancing their interests while delivering social impact and creating lasting change. CAPABILITIES & SOLUTIONS

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CLIENT CHALLENGE The client engages in a range of job creation activities in Afghanistan as a stabilization strategy to support the U.S. mission and mitigate insurgency. Jewelry making is a core artisanal skill that represents immense opportunity for job creation and niche sector growth in Afghanistan. There is international demand for low minimum order quantity jewelry manufacturing - which Kabul workshops can meet. The client’s challenge was that the quality of Kabul jewelry production and production management capabilities for volume orders was unknown. Our client needed to understand current capabilities, capacity and quality levels of Kabul jewelry workshops quickly and then train local workshops to produce jewelry at international quality standards.

OUR SOLUTION McColm & Company designed a rapid impact sector survey and responsive training methodology to develop a baseline of existing capabilities and quality. We then leveraged a production order from the social enterprise – Aayenda Jewelry – as a training and capacity building tool. Our solution was designed and successfully delivered over a five month period by a four person engagement team made up of two international consultants and two local Afghan consultants.

CLIENT Indigenous Industries Program Task Force for Business and Stability Operations U.S. Department of Defense MCCO CAPABILITIES DEPLOYED •  Capacity & Capability Building •  Post Conflict, Fragile & Transitional States •  Social Impact & Enterprise •  Quality Control •  Training •  Research & Analysis

OUR APPROACH McCO designed and implemented a responsive evaluation and training methodology that enabled our engagement team to rapidly respond to the precise training needs of the workshops and pivot our approach to meet realities on the ground, as needed. Rather than utilize rote memorization and classroom based training to improve quality of a vocational skill, McCO utilized the Aayenda Jewelry production order to provide real time, one-on-one quality control and production management mentoring to workshop owners and their employees. Participants told the engagement team that they favored our approach over past donor trainings because it directly correlated development of skill and quality improvement to income and real business opportunities.

14 Jewelry workshops identified and evaluated in Kabul

38 $300 Approximate average salary received by each artisan for 1 month of work (WB GNI per capita is $690 p/y)

53% Increase in jewelry produced at international sellable quality

SOCIAL IMPACT Jewelry production quality improved dramatically during McCO’s five-month engagement, as did understanding of international quality standards and customer service expectations. Consider that a single company – Aayenda Jewelry – placing a single medium sized jewelry production order provided employment and generated a living wage income for 38 Afghan artisans at the primary level for 30 days, as well as unknown numbers of secondary and tertiary beneficiaries. Now consider that most jewelry companies place orders at least three times per year – collections for Spring/Summer, Winter/Fall and Resort – and the result is that attracting just four companies to move their production to Kabul would have the potential to maintain the businesses of a quarter of the known Kabul sector each year.

Artisans directly employed during production training

OPPORTUNITIES •  Low minimum quantity order requirements: Factories in the major jewelry production centers of

India, China and Thailand require high minimum quantity per style orders (250-300 pieces per style) which is too large of an investment for jewelry designers and brands that are small or just starting out. The Kabul jewelry production sector is still developing and the workshops are willing to take orders at low per piece minimums (20-50 pieces per style) in order to prove themselves, grow their businesses and establish Afghanistan as a competitor in jewelry production.

•  Poised to become the Fair Trade jewelry production hub: Afghan jewelry production workshops operate independently and large factories don’t yet exist. This artisanal working style can be leveraged to differentiate the Afghan market and build a niche by pursuing Fair Trade certification. Working conditions are pleasant, with workers enjoying tea and ample breaks throughout the day. Earnings for skilled workers in Kabul averaged $300 per artisan during our engagement – that’s 420% more than the average Afghan annual income and 245% more than the official Afghan minimum wage (5,000 Afs per month).

LESSONS LEARNED •  Leveraging business for development accelerates results: Our methodology leveraged a

production order from a social enterprise as a training tool. The participating workshops understood that if they delivered high quality product on time, then there would be future business from this company. This motivated the workshops to do their best work and deliver on time and on budget.

McColm & Company

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