BUSINESS MODEL

+ Video presentation (round 2): https://youtu.be/Tu5pRInijz0

+ Introduction: 

Pieces is a project founded by Infinity Spirit, a company with five years of experience in manufacturing handicrafts, and personalized gifts for domestic and export markets. The core team of the project consists of members who are students of Foreign Trade University. The project follows the model of a circular economy and contributes to creating jobs for the disadvantaged people in Ho Chi Minh City in particular and the Southern provinces in general.

Currently, in Ho Chi Minh City, there are about 15 000 people with disabilities in working age, but only about 40% of people with disabilities have jobs, of which about 25% maintain stable jobs. This number is even larger when considering the Southern region. The demand for jobs in this group is on the rise, however, there are currently not many jobs suitable for them. Understanding these difficulties, the Pieces project was born with the goal of helping and improving the lives of people with disabilities by providing jobs for them.

The Pieces project supports job training for workers from disadvantaged groups in the disability centers and organizations in Ho Chi Minh City and the southern provinces. Employees who have completed their apprenticeship can become full-time employees for the company’s projects and receive a salary in accordance with their capabilities and needs. The main job of the aforementioned workers is to manufacture handmade knitted products based on pre-designed patterns. The project is aimed at the production of wicker products with raw materials made from scraps of leather that are purchased from leather manufacturing companies. The finished product will be brought to Infinity Spirit company to complete the inspection and quality assessment. The main product lines marketed are fashion accessories, home appliances, home decor, and gifts.

+ Social Challenge: 

In Vietnam, the leather manufacturing process generates a significant amount of unused leather scraps. One common approach is using chemicals to recycle small pieces of leather into larger panels. While this is a profitable and convenient method, it consumes large amounts of fuel and emits harmful chemicals into the environment. An alternative method is repurposing small pieces of leather to create decorative accessories. This trend is being pursued by many companies in Vietnam, as it brings out tremendous benefits.

PIECES also concerns the group of disadvantaged individuals, who are suffering unemployment the most. In the current time, there are not enough vocational centers to educate vulnerable people, they then have a lower opportunity to learn, and hence feel unconfident about their disadvantages.  Besides, as vocational training for people with disabilities requires longer time and greater effort than normal laborers, firms don’t want to spend time and money on this task.

Considering the scope and scale of our project, we are on a small scale as we do require not too much capital investment and labor force at first kick-off. Also, the scope lies in the locality as our supply chain activities mostly happen in the Northern part of Vietnam, utilizing laborers in Ho Chi Minh City.

+ Social Solution: 

About Recycling

• The scraps of leather collected from large factories will be classified into two categories: reusable and non-reusable. PIECES will collect the remaining usable leather and put it into a specific ạnd designed process to design, manufacture and distribute to consumers.

About Training 

• Design the production process suitable for the disadvantaged groups

• Send people to train and control the process, and provide direct support when needed.

• Applying the model in practice while making the appropriate amendments parallelly.

HOW

By combining and utilizing three relationships between the project and:

1. The leather manufacturers: the project leverages excess raw materials from the production process

2. The social community: utilizes underexplored vulnerable labor resources, the labor process is designed to be suitable for vulnerable workers, combined with support from equipment and the production chain of our stakeholders (INFINITY).

3. The distributors (to the end-users): the project connects with local distributors to reach the end-users

+ Video Presentation:  

+ Evidence:   PROOF

+ Certificate of Support Agreement from Infinity:   MINH CHỨNG NHẬN HỖ TRỢ TỪ DOANH NGHIỆP

+ Landing page: