Bame Piet
11 April 2008
Gaborone — Have you ever heard of Maun Windsor? Probably not. This is a locally made wooden chair that should set everyone talking in the United States of America (US).
It is the brainchild of Peter Mabeo, a Mogoditshane-born man who joined the woodwork industry approximately 11 years ago. "I had just finished schooling and I had nowhere to go, so I decided to go into woodwork because I had a background in the field," he says. Mabeo started with a group of other unemployed men doing piece jobs in Tlokweng.
During the struggle they were able to get tenders from individuals, companies and government. Their work includes partitioning and they get jobs from architects and interior designers.
But Mabeo had big dreams and he focused on furniture design despite the challenges such as the small market in Botswana and the high cost of material he orders from West Africa via South Africa. In 2002 he attended the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York where he met with designers from various countries.
Four years later Mabeo launched his product at the Fair and it featured in the US media after winning the Editors' Choice Award for best craftsmanship. The prize opened doors for his company. "We then established the North-South Project to build a collaboration between designers in the developed North and those in the developing South," he says.
Then the Botswana Export Development and Investment Authority (BEDIA) and the US Embassy in Gaborone came on board and assisted by partly funding the trips to the US Trade Fair. "Last year the US Trade Hub assisted us in availing some distribution assistance," he says with a smile. Mabeo secured a reputable retail partner who deals in design products such as household furniture "who deals only with fully licensed designers". The launching of the Maun Windsor, through a company called Design Within Reach (DWR), was done early this month in New York and it is to continue in other major cities, he says.
"The company has 75 studios across the US and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and it will be distributing the Maun Windsor throughout the United States," Mabeo confirms.
On the question of how many millions (of Pula) the contract is going to pay him, the furniture man was cagey. "It is not in millions but we are hoping for the best.
We are just taking the whole exercise stage by stage," he says. He adds that they recently exported a bunch of the chairs and they definitely will need to upscale his facility to cope with demand for the product. Mabeo currently employs 30 people at his warehouse in the Gaborone International Commerce Park.
The Maun Windsor has a 'made in Botswana' label under it and Mabeo is confident that nobody, not even the Chinese, will make a counterfeit of his product. He emphasizes that DWR is a reputable company that only deals with licensed manufactures/designers.
Why Maun Windsor? Mabeo explains that he met a Canadian designer at the ICFF and he invited her to Botswana to see if basket weaving in the Okavango area could also qualify for the fair.
The woman fell in love with Maun Town and I named the chair after that visit, he says. After penetrating US lucrative market, Mabeo has even bigger dreams to see his company grow further. "From here we are heading for major cities like London, Milan (Italy),Tokyo and other Asian capitals. And we are confident that with a number of our products we will get a good deal, but we will be doing that stage by stage," he says.
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