Photo Credit: USAID/Albania   A worker at Florjan-V sh.p.k. tends a massive loom that produces towels. As the thread stream from the top of the machine, they are woven into giant textiles, which will eventually be cut into individual towels.

Assistance Helps Business Tailor Products for Domestic and Foreign Markets

Factory Improves Towels for Wider Sales
Assistance Helps Business Tailor Products for Domestic and Foreign Markets

June 15, 2005 | Shkodër, Albania

Viktor Marku’s towels are used throughout Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro. As the only Albanian towel producer, Marku accounts for a quarter of the domestic market and has a slowly growing presence abroad. In eight years, his business Florjan-V sh.p.k., has doubled in size and now employs 12 workers.

“This is a business that has a market because the consumption is good,” said Marku, while surveying his factory’s humming looms, and female workers cutting and packaging towels of all sizes and colors. “You eat at least three times a day, so you’ll use a towel at least six times a day.”

USAID’s Small Business Credit and Assistance project (SBCA) backs the sentiment, and is helping Marku expand his sales though loans and technical assistance. Three years ago, Marku borrowed $30,000 to repair some equipment that helped him double towel production. He paid off the loan last spring and borrowed another $60,000 to buy a generator and a minivan to deliver towels to his retailers and wholesalers.

“Marku is the perfect example of the businessman that we are trying to and can help,” said Jeff Houghton, chief of party of SBCA. The project has provided credit and technical assistance to more than 4,000 businesses in 33 of Albania’s 36 districts since March 2002.

Loans, which are repaid within two years, have gone to businesses for help in creating new products, adding employees, or the purchase and repair of equipment.

SBCA has also offered technical assistance to entrepreneurs like Hilmi Brace, the owner of Albania’s only recycled paper processor, Hermes sh.p.k. His company, based outside the city of Fier, produces toilet paper and cellophane tape out of the recycled paper and is about to branch out into paper napkins and towels.

Brace needed to borrow more than the maximum $50,000 SBCA loan. He went to other local banks, but they were not convinced that this was a bankable project. So he used SBCA’s help to draft a business plan that he could present to banks and convince them of his plans to purchase new equipment.

“Up to yesterday, not a single bank would lend me money,” he said. With the new business plan in hand “banks are fighting each other to give me a loan.” Brace recently received a $250,000 loan from Procredit bank.  

SBCA works with small and medium enterprises focused on manufacturing and agro-business. In its early years, the main goal of the project was to offer credit and general business development support. Now it is more focused on providing a small number of businesses more specific aid, such as help in developing new products, and learning how to better market their products.

Marku, for instance, is being advised to invest in a computerized accounting and production control system, which will enhance the quality of his product, and hopefully make it appealing to consumers abroad. Following advice from SBCA, he has also added Florjan-V labels to his towels, and is now also using some new patterns and designs.

“This project is all about getting Albanian products into Albanian stores,” said Houghton. “And consumers are demanding these days, so we have to make products as attractive as possible.”