Opportunity for Women's business model in complete transparency

What is Opportunity for Women’s business model?

Opportunity for Women's primary aim is to set up weaving cooperatives in South East Asia to develop local activities in villages and thus combat rural exodus and the loss of know-how while proving to ethnic groups that their culture allows them to escape from poverty.
To set up these cooperatives and ensure their sustainability, Opportunity for Women develops collections of cushions based on women's traditional weavings. The fabrics ordered are assembled in France by women in rehabilitation.

Opportunity for Women is present throughout the weaving value chain: from sourcing raw materials to weaving and natural dyeing (if the know-how and plants are still present)!

The aim is to support women, to set up a sustainable textile sector based on the knowledge of these women and to assure customers of the reliability and integral ecology of the fabric.

At the same time, Opportunity for Women supports cooperatives to develop business development skills and find BtoB clients.

How to ensure that weavers are well paid?

In each country, Opportunity for Women finds out the average salary and chooses the high range as the base salary, then evaluates with the women their working hours and thus assesses the fairest price.

For example, in Buon Ma Thuot, among the Ede minorities, the average salary is between €7 and €8 per day for a full day of work in the fields! Opportunity for Women decided, in discussion with the weavers, to pay them €8 per day of work (between 6 and 8 hours of weaving) and to give the women the freedom to manage their own schedule: they work from home at their own pace. The honeycomb , flying birds and tree branch patterns woven by the Ede are purchased directly from the weaver at €15/meter, not including the price of the threads. The price per meter varies depending on the difficulty of the patterns, the weaving technique and the length ordered, as installing the frame takes a lot of time.

What are the other costs of cushions?

In addition to the weaving, there is the cost of the threads, the transport costs, the piping and zip, the sewing in France by women in rehabilitation and the interior of the cushion. In addition, 8% of the sale price of the cushion is donated to Opportunity for Women's “Act for” programs in favor of education, the environment and empowerment.

Costs may vary slightly from cooperative to cooperative, the graph below is based on costs for a Jarai minority cushion in central Vietnam from the “Boni” collection.

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