Scredit Crunch

Entrepreneurship takes many shapes and forms. Start-up ecosystem in Finland today is growing richer with stories of tech entrepreneurs hacking their way towards big exits and international success. Social entrepreneurs, however, receive much less glamour and coverage even though their numbers are growing and their stories are just as fascinating. Here’s one such story of a for-profit one-person company that is as much about business as it is about maximizing social impact.

Ten years ago Jenni Moberg spent a year in Japan. Coming from Finland, she recognized similarities in people’s aesthetic values: simplicity of design, preference for straight lines, natural materials and colours are as popular in Japanese design as they are in Finnish. That’s when the seed for the business idea was planted.

It was not until 2007 that Jenni founded her own company 0.7 design that helps Finnish artists, artisans and designers sell their produce abroad, particularly in Japan. She mostly exports small gift and kitchen items, children’s clothing from ecologically grown cotton and things made out of recycled material. The biggest hits in Japanese markets are products made out of birch bark.

When she started she hasn’t even heard of the term ‘social entrepreneurship’ yet she was one from the start.  Her goal with the company was to promote hand-made Finnish design, help talented artists who often live in remote areas of Finland and lack any business or computer skills to sell their produce beyond the town’s gift shop. Apart from having a social impact in Finland by supporting local producers, her business gives 0.7% of profits for development projects abroad. Right now 0.7 design sponsors a project in Sierra Leone that re-educates local teachers and motivates them to return to work in rural schools.

The most important and most difficult thing for a start-up is to find customers. Jenni started off selling produce of her Finnish designer-friends to friends of her friends in Japan. Little by little that network grew and now her company supplies 20 shops in Japan.

Many artists think that when their items are sold internationally they’d immediately get large sums in income. What they don’t realize is that the retail world works slowly and sometimes you’d need to wait for a couple of months to receive money for the item you sold. The biggest challenge initially was to convince the designers to trust her so Jenni took a wholesale approach to the business: buying the items first and reselling at her own risk. When the business took off and her company gained more trust, that model was changed to give her more flexibility.

The business goes in cycles but Jenni enjoys being her own boss and when you see the spark in her eye whenever she talks about her company, you understand why. ‘Helping people from different backgrounds mix and realize immense possibilities their cooperation can bring keeps me going’, says Jenni. ‘In the future, I would like to have close business partners to help me find new markets in other countries. But more importantly, I want to be an example for entrepreneurs in any field. I’ve gained some valuable knowledge since launching my own company and I’m happy to share it. ‘

Check out Aalto Social Impact – one of the few groups in Helsinki that actively supports and encourages social entrepreneurship.