Legae La Dinku (LLD) is a small-scale business that is located in the growing village of Lower Mayeakgoro; also known as Itireleng next to Pampierstad in Taung, North West Province,South Africa. LLD is an agricultural business focusing on animal husbandry-including raising lambs into sheep, breeding, buying from other farmers (at our initial stage) and re-sell them for meat products in neighbouring villages and suburban areas, alive and as lamb meat readily available.
LLD`s sheep husbandry business and meat products, is on the brink of penetrating a lucrative market in a rapidly growing economy. Our Products will be of high quality to ensure customer satisfaction, supported by impeccable service to our customers. We will be making more accessible our products by setting up a vendor in each village for customers who are located far from LLD`s facilities and at the same time slaughter for customers on demand as well as selling meat packages to customers who does need readily available meat. As LLD prospers and grows, these communities will continue to benefit from the value created by LLD and our performance as a committed corporate citizen.
Initial plans are to provide quality products that are vitally tied to lifestyle and culture, where ceremonies such as weddings, parties, traditional rituals, funerals and tomb stone unveiling feature lamb or sheep meat. Demand for this product is also high at other social events such as men/women stockvels, societies, as well as other family celebrations and gatherings. LLD`s live sheep products shall be extensively distributed to remote ,yet extremely viable areas where the market analysis shows an unfilled demand for readily available ,good quality sheep meat.
To prosper LLD will be responsive yet flexible, exceeding customer`s expectations by providing them with what they want, when they want it and ahead of the competition`s typical reaction. From product concept to goods despatch, LLD will ensure that every policy and procedure, system and process reaches our objective of improving the response of the entire company to our customers. Interaction between all functional areas, particularly between marketing and management, will inform our operation; for in order to realise LLD`s full potential, clued-up and creative marketing will become a strategic asset.
Our marketing strategy will be grounded in making sure that our customers understand our products and how LLD is able to fulfil customer needs, offering the right product to the right target customer through information and marketing mechanisms resonate with our customer base. LLD marketing will reflect an understanding of our customers’ appreciation of quality good sheep meat and their need for an accessible outlet to acquire the product. Our products prices will take into consideration people`s budgets ,as well as the cost of the product and distribution so as to ensure that we remain viable and operational .Hence we, intend to implement a market penetration strategy guaranteeing that LLD is well known and respected in the community and our industry.
Our target markets will primarily compromise those who appreciate good quality product. The working class will range from government workforce who is the major employer and who continues to have a large portion of the market, to administrative personnel as well as pensioners and skilled labourers.
LLD will be the suppliers to funeral undertakers who will offer sheep meat as a new funeral policy product/value add that the funeral directors can add to their service options for the members of their respective burial societies. Market analysis indicates that in a sample of funeral providers in Mayeakgoro, providers average 200 or more paying members in their burial societies. These clients enter into contracts to pre-arrange their funerals and prepay some of the expenses involved.
The funeral directors contacted for LLD`s market survey indicate that for the advance payment of sheep as a funeral good, the undertaker will charge the client/their policy holder R25.00 of which R22.00 will go to LLD . This advance-payment model can apply to other entities and ceremonies, such as those celebrated by men, women, youth, stockvels and societies. LLD has introduced booklets and stamps where these stockvels and the general public can redeem them by buying a sheep or sliced meat packages at our in-house butchery. It is a tradition that every year in Lower Mayeakgoro a stockvel of about 30 members buy 30 sheep and divide amongst themselves from a farmer situated about 200km`s away.
LLD`s objectives in the first year of operation are to achieve the following measurable results:
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Mr. Messiah Modisaotsile Sehako, the Director and the Business Development Manager, a hard worker in everything he does, with the entrepreneurial zest, from his primary school days selling home-made dough-nuts, peanuts to oranges, continued to secondary level where his friends used to call him “Mr Fisherman”, because of the home made fried fish he used to sell.
He worked for Multi Serve and later became the franchise owner of the same unit in 2004; there he did everything from re-pairing shoes and cutting keys, Stock taking, packing consignments, doing presentations to potential clients for carpet cleaning machines, invoicing etc. His next stop was the, South African Broadcasting Corporation worked there for 1 year as a data capture and stock taker and went to the department of social services before joining First National Bank in 2006 till 2013, his financial skills and knowledge allows him to make sound informed and effective decisions through understanding of finances.
Academically, coming from a marginalised background he has excelled against all odds, he boasts certificate in banking and business management (Birnam College-2000), certificate in marketing and management (Damelin College-2007) , certificate in small stock management(Animal Research Council Irene -2007 and currently studying towards the degree in marketing and marketing management through IMM Graduate School of Marketing.
Blogpost and picture submitted by Messiah Modisaotsile Sehako (South Africa) – msehako6[at]gmail.com
The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.
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Sounds like a well researched project that has a great potential… good luck