Our most recent training just yesterday brought on board Nurudini, shown below with Jan and his ten first batteries for new cutomers. Nurudini hails from Tin Kon, a small town on the main road about 14 kilometers south of Koforidua. Tin Kon has electricity, but battery usage is still high for a number of reason. Nurudini runs a small shop in the town with his sister. He sold out these ten first batteries in his first day before taking public transportation back to Koforidua today to refill his stock with us.
Eric also signed up yesterday as an agent operating within a large suburb of Koforidua. He too sold all of his first ten batteries in his first day on the job and returned to Burro HQ for new stock today.
Jan has done a great job of calibrating our growth plan to our current capacity. While we could go much faster, we've decided to add a new agent about every other week for now. We'll have strong representation in three critically different types of service areas: more remote villages, smaller towns on main roads, and the heart of our larger city, Koforidua. We're focused on supporting existing agents and clients at 110% to ensure that by 15 November we understand all critical parameters related to the ongoing success, sustainability, and scalability of the business. If all signs are as positive then as we now expect, we will be dropping our second, major order for additional batteries.
Being a bit of a carto geek, we of course have a giant, large-scale map mosaic plastered on the wall to help us plot our expansion. Here's a tiny section of it over the heart of the region. The pink dot is Burro HQ. The green dots are our two agents who are currently working "Kof Town". Yellow dots show areas we believe should support a new agent. The larger map over the entire region hosts about 40 yellow dots.
It is still very early, but Burro's future is looking brighter with every battery rented…
3 comments:
Very exciting! It'll be interesting to compare the rental success in the villages, small towns, and big city - and to see how the franchisees choose to sell their batteries in their different communities.
You're making this look izi, Whit!
Thanks for checking it out, Ben.
We have more questions than answers right now to be sure, but the most encouraging development is that there appears to be real and sustained demand at price points that should support good returns.
The key unknowns right now are how both the distribution channel and the equipment will perform over time. If they hold up as we anticipate, we should be in good shape.
Your early leg work here is what made this jump-start possible, Ben, so kudos to you who knows as well as anyone what Yoda might have said, "Izi, this is not."
But it is great fun to see it starting to work.
Go Burro go.... I am very happy with the progress so far and I can actually see that very bright BURRO light at the end of the relatively darker "BURRO Start-up" tunnel. Great job guys!
Shika
Post a Comment