Treak Creations is a social enterprise run by Salin, manager of Treak Community Centre (TCC), to support the work of the Centre and provide work for local women.  Salin is a skilled seamstress and runs a well equipped sewing centre at TCC, making a variety of items to sell to local people and tourists.  Recently they were able to acquire a site for a shop, located just 400 metres from Treak Community Centre, along the main road to Tonle Sap Lake.  The shop, named Laura’s Dream, opened at the end of March, and sells items produced by the women from the sewing centre.

Helen went to volunteer at Treak for four weeks, starting at the beginning of March.  Her brief was to use her considerable business skills to assist Salin in creating a simple critical path analysis to identify priorities and processes for her plans for the development of the income-generating initiatives of Treak Creations.  So the timing could not have been better!

Helen sent several updates during her time at Treak – here are some extracts from what she told us as plans to open the shop, and to develop other initiatives, took shape.

‘I am thrilled to be assisting Salin with the exciting new shop called Laura’s Dream. Initially, I was a bit worried that the brief of critical path analysis was not possible, as things do not run that way here. Understandably, Salin was a little apprehensive of me. However, after a trip to town sorting materials for the shop, the ice was broken, and we now work well together and have a laugh. I have done a review of their customer base so they can focus on their strengths rather than trying to do everything. We had a good session discussing different markets and I produced a short analysis report.
Salin used one of the dress-making patterns that I brought and is doing a pilot run of girls’ dresses for the Cambodian New Year. We have done a review of their fabric stock to identify colours that Europeans will like. It appears that there is nothing like this product out there in the souvenir shops.
I have also worked with Salin on a project plan for the official opening of the shop using a technique we use at work. Additionally, I have done a draft outline of a Slow Fashion Tour and garment production which might be a toe in the water for doing tours.’

‘We’ve had another fantastic week, and I could easily work here another month! I have trained Salin and Michael on Kanban planning, a really simple work allocation and planning technique of putting on a board swimlanes of people with headings showing work not started, started, and done. Salin and I had a session on listing all the work needed for the launch of the new shop, Laura’s Dream, which formed the basis of the plan board. We’re almost ready for the first launch party for the locals, and we’ve come up with lots of ideas for selling the new line in kids’ clothes, a charity shop reduction card, and the promotion. The shop is looking great, and all the ideas for setting up the changing room, etc., have been taken on board.
Now, Salin is using the Kanban work tracking technique for the sewing ladies and has created a board in the room so that she can allocate and control work. I am thrilled!

Apart from that, we have made great strides in the sales review and planning. Taking into account overheads and the cost of production (done by a previous volunteer), Salin now knows how much she needs to break even in the shop and has a plan for years 2 and 3. I have also created a tracking spreadsheet for sales, and they are using my approach to categorize different types of customers against the profiles so they can see who they are selling most to. This helps with forward planning. The other thing I did this week was staff training in the shop on how to sell to non-Cambodians. I did a workshop on upselling and cross-selling and a presentation to the team. We also had role-playing exercises for the staff so they could try it out. We have created crib sheets for the people in the shop. I also did a photoshoot. Additionally, we created a social media poster for the shop so that people can tag us in.’

Photos taken at the opening of the shop:

If you would like to know more about volunteering with Treak Creations take a look at our website or email dianne@travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk