Business

FIJI company wins top award

By Sophie Foster Hildebrand

IT is a dream come true for any cottage industry - winning an international award ahead of big names. But for Sandollars, a Fiji family-run company, it is a real ity. Within their first year of operation, mother-and-daughter team, Gaetane and Andree Austin, picked up a top internation al award for cosmetic packaging and a sil ver medal for innovation. Sandollars Fiji Limited won the Gold Medal for Environmental Packaging in the 1998 International Soap and Cosmetic Packaging Contest and a silver medal for Innovative Concept and Superior Design.

Mrs Austin said, “We got the Environmental Award, out of all the com panies that had entered in the world, so we are very chafed about that”. The award winning submission, for Sandollars Sovu ni Viti (Fijian soap) logs, reads: “In the South Seas, the coconut tree is known as the tree of life; every part of the tree is a usable gift for-mankind. Sovu ni Viti pure and natural coconut soap logs from the Fiji Islands are based on this philosophy. This soap set is designed to look like natural logs and is packaged in corrugated board and recycled paper. This box is held together with natural coconut string.”

The progress that Sandollars made is commendable. “In the beginning we were doing bits of everything, and we’ve slowly been able to weed out things that aren’t very lucrative or that we don’t do very well,” Mrs Austin told PIM, “we started off with handicrafts and things like that, and then we moved into soap about a year ago, and now we’re doing scented oil. The base is coconut oil with a fragrance and we are hoping to use a cold-pressed oil soon”.

Sandollars is a family business run in the kitchen, living and dining rooms of the Austin home. Stepping into the house is like walkingdnto a hive of activity. “I have several children. Andree is my eldest daughter, and 1 have a son in America and we are trying to get him and his wife to set up some marketing - especially mail orders. But that’s a bit down the track,” she

said. “Sandollars, the company, has been going for about a year. Before that we were a partnership, and we were very, very ama teurish and we decided to get professional about it. “We have a factory making the soap, but we import the fragrances from an international top-of-the-range fragrance company”.

The company has just launched its range of scented coconut oil, called Waiwai ni Viti. “We are hoping that is going to be a hit. Eventually we hope to be able to use local fragrances. All the little boxes that we use for packaging are made from scraps of wood that would normally be thrown away or burnt. So we are recy cling everything that we can, and it’s turn ing out really well”. It is not hard to see that the company is very committed to environmental consciousness.

“We are a green company and we believe in recycling and reusing,” Mrs Austin says, “so we utilise the off-cuts of wood that would normally be thrown away”. The company also offers women a chance to work from home with their fam ilies. "Of course, we’re in this to make money but it’s very nice when you’re mak ing money to also know you’re helping other people,” Mrs Austin says.

“We have a lot of women working in their home. We drop off stuff, and pick up as well so it’s a true cottage industry. They make the masi bags. We use Father Barr’s boys when they are available, or the hand icapped people at the Rehabilitation Centre because many of these people are talented and often they are forgotten”.

There is even a whole village which “does nothing but making masi” for Sandollars. “They do it to the sizes and colours we want. We have $3OOO-4000 of masi a month”. The important thing, Mrs Austin says, is that the Sandollars’ orders are met at home with the family. “I think cottage industries are a very good thing.

I’d certainly encourage it in Fiji,” she says.

With all this success, the one thing that “bugs” Mrs Austin is “the attitude locally that, ‘oh, if it’s local, then it’s going to be late, or the quality won’t be very good’.”

"We want to get away from that, to show that you can be consistent year-in-year-out, that you will be reliable even if it means you have to work all day and night,” she says. The Austins are, at the moment, attempting to consolidate their market share with their Sovu ni Viti, Waiwai ni Viti, handicrafts, corporate gifts, private label and custom orders. ■