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What workedA furniture workshop owner in Sherpur Sadar, in a Prothom Alo report

From carpenter on someone else's bench to owner, with 25 lakh taka in the business

One of the roughly 300 furniture workshops across seven villages in Sherpur Sadar is run by a former carpenter whose investment in the business now stands at 25 lakh taka.

This owner in Pashchimsheri, Sherpur Sadar, used to work as a carpenter in other people's workshops. After setting up his own workshop and shop his capital grew step by step, and his investment in the business now stands at 25 lakh taka; he has built a two-storey house in town and is educating his children. The cluster he belongs to began around 2007 with 8-10 workshops and now runs to roughly 300 across seven villages, involving about 5,000 people and supplied by 20-25 sawmills. The advantage is raw material: cheap akashmoni timber from the nearby Garo hills forests, with the finished furniture going to Dhaka, Gazipur, Mymensingh, Kishoreganj, Netrokona, Tangail, Jamalpur, Brahmanbaria, Sylhet and Bogura. Owners say Covid hurt them for about two years, with wholesalers unable to travel and thinly capitalised makers forced to sell below the agreed price. What he started with, and in which year, is not stated.

Lessons

  1. 1.Cheap raw material close at hand is the advantage itself: low-cost akashmoni timber from the Garo hills built this seven-village furniture trade
  2. 2.Without a cash buffer a downturn forces a fire sale: in the Covid years it was the thinly capitalised makers who sold below the agreed price

Published with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.

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