Mohca Beauty scales up customer trust and loyalty through Transparency and Traceability
Mohca Beauty, a Ugandan-based manufacturing company, is committed to supplying quality skin care products that sufficiently meet the needs of its valued customers. “We are currently focusing on shea butter as the main ingredient for our products, and so our work involves engagement with shea farmers and collectors, manufacturing, and marketing of skin care products” says Marion Etiang, the Managing Director for Mohca Beauty.
Like most small and medium enterprises, Mohca Beauty has struggled to provide adequate information to its customers about its products and the production processes. This challenge has continued to affect the company’s efforts to grow organically through sufficient market access and customer loyalty.
With the rampant instant communications, whistle-blowers, inquisitive media, and Googling, consumers routinely put firms under the microscope (Tapscott, 2011). The increasing importance of company transparency and product traceability in response to customers’ inquisitions is a trend occurring across all industries. The scepticism and inquisition have resulted from the rise of environmental and wellness consciousness and the surge of connected devices and the world wide web that have opened customers to unlimited channels for information exchange.
This recent emphasis on transparency and traceability has continued to put companies on the spot, especially those focusing on manufacturing organic products such as Mohca Beauty. “The program by Invest in Africa (IIA) and GIZ was a good fit for us because it had a transparency and traceability component, and we wanted to be able to respond to the constant inquisition by our customers,” said Marion.
According to Marion, the program was comprehensive enough, and she enrolled 6 of her staff from the various departments for the program components, including access to finance, access to market, good manufacturing practices, new product development, and transparency and traceability. She adds, “We are progressively implementing the recommendation and lessons from all the program components, but we picked and ran with transparency and traceability at first because it was more urgent for the company."
Through the program, the participants have adopted the Phy2App, a transparency and traceability tool enabling them to provide adequate business and product information to their clients. For Mohca Beauty, Phy2App has been instrumental in helping them to build client loyalty and trust and connect with new ones. Through Phy2App, consumers can access information about product development, ingredients therein, and raw material. This information has been vital in gaining the trust of the clients, especially during a time when they suspect counterfeit products and fake claims of organic products in the market.
Marion says that with the adoption of transparency and traceability, she has seen a rise in customer inquiries resulting from referrals by their current customers and digital marketing. “We intend to venture into trade shows, especially to tap into the export market, and the Phy2App will be vital in ensuring we can provide sufficient information to prospective customers and eventually make valuable sales.
Mohca Beauty is one of the 40 small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises from Kenya and Uganda who participated in a program to upscale manufacturing SMEs in natural products. The program was implemented by Invest in Africa (IIA) in partnership with GIZ Business Scouts for Development.
