Ganesh Himal Trading

Succession in Action, Part 2

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michael

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Co-Owner, Denise Attwood
Namaste! Candi Horton and Brian Schmucker of what was formerly Baksheesh Fair Trade are fair trade retail pioneers writ large. If you’ve been involved in Fair Trade you have most likely felt their influence and benefitted greatly from their mentoring and small business advice. Even now, as they transition out of owning their Fair Trade stores they continue to help by shining a light on ways to keep the stores they so consciously created alive.
 
 
 
Here, we carry on our conversation about how to intentionally plan for the transition of fair trade businesses to the next generation. In doing so we hope to help build and strengthen the future of Fair Trade by helping fair traders keep the vision of their stores and businesses alive long after they have stopped being their owners. We also hope to create a platform for an open and fruitful dialog around the successes, failures and near misses of those who are or have transitioned their Fair Trade businesses.
 
 
 
We are all leaders and learners in understanding how to keep these visions alive so hearing from our community hopefully will serve us all well. We hope these conversations will spark something within you to begin thinking of how you can transition your fair trade business in the future. Your community, the artisans and some young energetic visionary you mentor will be so grateful to you if take the time now to create that pathway.
 
We would love your insight, stories and comments as we continue this conversation.
 
 
 
On another note, we are really excited to announce the launching of Conscious Connections Foundation’s new website and the completion of CCF’s 2018 Annual report. This added layer of removing barriers to women and girls in Nepal is meeting with great success. Enjoy!
 
 
 
Namaste,
Denise
 
 

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Succession in Action, Part 2: Interview with Candi Horton from Baksheesh

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Candi Horton and her husband, Brian Smucker, are former owners of Baksheesh Fair Trade in Sonoma and St. Helena, CA. Their work in fair trade spanned almost 20 years. Candi talks about their process of selling their business below.
What was your exit plan?
As we looked toward retirement from fair trade retailing we had two goals: have the business continue beyond our retirement and retire early enough to pursue other interests. This required a long term plan.
Consideration was given to closing the stores. This was counter to our reasons for starting stores in the first place. Our purpose in opening stores was to create jobs. To close the business would affect local staff, vendors and artisans. We wanted those jobs to continue.
That left selling the stores. But did we have something worth selling? We contacted an outside business valuation company and contracted with them for an overview of the business. This report provided a selling price and areas of operation that could be improved.
How did you decide to when to retire?
We wanted to do it early enough so we still had the health and energy to pursue other interests. This is quite a subjective goal but for us it meant retiring in our early 60s. With that benchmark discussed and established we could move on to a plan.
How did you plan for a seamless transition?
Guaranteeing the business’ long term viability after we were gone was very important to us. If at all possible we wanted to sell to someone who understood our community, had a solid commitment to fair trade and had the retail expertise to keep the stores moving forward. For us, that meant looking to our current staff for interest in purchasing the business.
A five year plan was structured. Each year training would be scheduled for a different area of retail management including customer service, inventory control, accounting/payroll, advertising/promotion and staffing/training. As each area was covered the owner-in-training would have on-going responsibility for that area. At the end of each year all parties would meet to review the next steps and confirm continued interest in proceeding. With this plan in place we approached our staff for interest.
With the five year plan we also committed to assistance in financing the purchase which would include retaining sufficient cash on hand for operations. To start with we assumed this would mean support in securing a small business loan. In fact, it ended with us holding the ten year sales contracts.
Did it work?
The plan only failed when we failed to follow the plan – sadly. The first store worked seamlessly. The second store had no one on staff interested in the offer. Instead of lengthening the time frame in order to work with a new staff person who might then be open to the five year plan, the plan was shortened. This proved to be inadequate for proper training and oversight and the store closed. Sticking to the five year plan and adding extra reporting requirements to the sale of the second store may have resulted in a better outcome.

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