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PEOPLink - E-commerce for artisan products
PEOPLink is a non-profit and fair trade organisation and was founded in the United States in 1995.
One of the two founders, Daniel Salcedo, had travelled to Haiti, Guatemala and Peru in the framework of his work in the Human Rights sector in the early 90s and had come across a number of small artisan groups. He noticed that these groups tried to export their products, but that they only earned very little money from these exports. The main reason: most of the goods only made their way out of the country with the help of multiple levels of middle men, leaving the artists with very small margins. Salcedo came up with a great solution: e-commerce. Together with his partner he founded PEOPLink and commissioned a number of web-creators to develop the so-called CatGen-System - an online platform on which artisans and other small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) from all over the world can offer their products and present themselves and their crafts.
The system works in the following way: with the help of local development-NGOs, PEOPLink finds people at the grass-root level who receive training to become so-called "trading partners". They are equipped with material such as computers and digital cameras. Their role is to support the local crafts businesses in presenting themselves and their products on the CatGen platform. They can also help the artisans to additionally create their own websites. The trading partners further organise bulk shipments and can also function as "communicators" between craftspeople, customers and the PEOPLink head office.
Potential customers can view the products in the online catalogue and can enter into direct contact with the producers. When purchasing, the money is first sent to the PEOPLink head office in Maryland. Customers have the right to return the goods within fourteen-days. If they are satisfied, PEOPLink forwards the money to the producers. Often, however, PEOPLink buys up products in advance - on one hand to be able to deliver faster to the customers and on the other to support producers who are not able to pre-finance their productions.
PEOPLink finance themselves and their local trading partners through a 7% commission on all products sold via their platform. Today, after ten years of existence, more than 2000 businesses from 42 countries (most of them countries of the South) advertise their products on the CatGen platform. A total of 200,000 people benefit from the sales via PEOPLink.
In 2005 the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published the report "E-commerce for Development - the case of Nepalese Artisan Exporters" and presented PEOPLink in this context.
The report came to the following conclusions:
In 2004 all of the 31 surveyed Nepalese artisan enterprises had attained additional monthly revenues averaging 1103 USDollars. Thanks to the online sales they had employed a total of 1672 new employees. By July 2005 their additional monthly revenues had grown to an average of 1852 USDollars and 4213 extra jobs had been created!
The report points out the effectiveness of the PEOPLink trading partner system as the main cause of this enormous success. A further important factor is that through participating in so-called metamarkets like the CatGen platform, businesses can reach a much larger market while at the same time improving vastly their own credibility.
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