One of the special difficulties for Indigenous who return hometowns to start a business is the Tribe people don't accept their suggestions and treat them as an outsider. So I simply let the employees make their own working rules to build consensus. In this way, everyone will comply with the rules completely. 
Reviewing her entrepreneurial journey, Ms. Xie Shu-hui, the Person in Charge of "Bear Love Weave Home", has learned about the issue of employees' self-identity. "In the beginning, I managed the Weave Workshop by the management which I learned from the city, requiring the implementation of operational procedures, performance evaluation, etc., but I didn't get the right balance and ended up in a mess," said Ms. Xie.
"We are free by nature." the employees explained to me. It is the actual dilemma most entrepreneurs face by returning hometowns to start their businesses: Returning to their hometowns for holidays is like being a guest. So you get along well with the Tribe's people. However, when it comes to starting a business on the ground. If you did not set up the business full-time but have another factory in Taichung during the week and return to Nantou on the weekends for the side business like me. It leads to the suspicion that you want to plunder the Tribe's resources for profit.

Spend One Year for Employees to Learn Weaving and Build up Confidence 
The employees' distrusts reflected in work are against or do not cooperate attitudes of the operator. At the early business stage, in order to handle Personnel Matters, Ms. Xie held many meetings which let employees set their own rules and regulations, such as establishing professional and administrative positions, detailed business divisions, and personal performance goals. Once the consensus of "What rules you made, you have to follow them" was reached, all the employees have followed the regulation until now.
After the Personnel Management Regulation has been made, the next step is training employees' weaving skills. It is another task. Ms. Xie recalled when the new employees were still learning the skills of weaving, sewing, and patterning. But the Weaving Store had already launched, so the visitors came and sometimes were picky about the quality and weaving skill of the products. "Some employees cared too much about the comments and wanted to resign directly!"
It is not easy to recruit talents in the Tribe, she was not given up at the small hit. After thinking over and over again, Ms. Xie decided back from the beginning and restarted building up employees' confidence. "I spent a whole year only encouraging them to focus on weave learning without selling products.  After a year, we just restarted to take new orders. Since then, we only take high customer demand products to fulfill customers' needs." 
When Bear Love Weave Home was first established in 2016, it applied Multi-Employment Promotion Program of the Ministry of Labor. From employees' mental settlement to get the business on track, it took 3 years to pay the "Business Tuition". However, Ms. Xie is precious to the adjustment period because the Consultant of the Ministry of Labor provides lots of advice on personnel resources made them on a stable track when the Workshop was in the adjustment period. The 2 senior employees are still employed now, and the remaining 4 disadvantaged employees from single-parent families also cherish their jobs.

Target the High-Value Customer Demand Market
After setting the mood of internal employees, Ms. Xie can lead them to build a more diversified business model. Specifically, all the products and services are around the "Development of Weaving Technology".
In the product part, the most important task of Bear Love Weave Home is to cultivate talents. So Ms. Xie invited Ms. Xie Xiu-feng, the apprentice of the Tribe's elder master weaver Ms. Zhang Yu-ying, to teach a weaving class; Stitching is taught by the workshop staff, and Patterns are designed by Ms. Xie. Whether the students are an adult or a child, the teaching courses are open to those who are interested in learning.
About the products, whether they are sold in the Workshop Store or the vendors, Ms. Xie doesn't produce traditional weaving products but high-value customer-demand ones. For example, customers who prefer a new style pillow will specify the theme and ask the workshop to design and knit by their demands. "Such as it is the year of the tiger, so the tiger head pillows are popular."  
After the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, sales were frozen in the store and the vendors. Like most retailers, Bear Love Weave Home also transferred the business to the e-commerce platform. However, the main product is not Bags but DIY Weaving Kits for the "Stay-at-home Economy." The Kits have not only basic fabrics, buttons, and threads but also low to high-level patterning techniques.

Weaving Teaching Combined with Tribal Tour and Farming Experience
About the service part, the business is broader. The main business is local and relocation teaching. The local teaching mains the internal weaving and DIY kits-making courses targeted to the outside visitors who expect to experience. Therefore, the machine equipment, techniques explanation, and practice are easy to learn.
However, if the visitors come to Nantou Tribes only for the Weaving Experience, most won't visit the Weaving Store. So Ms. Xie combined the two Tribes' resources as a one-day tour by receiving the advice. One Tribe's people are responsible for guiding, and another is for the farming experience.

Farming Experience plus Archery Activity Attracts More Visitors
The most popular farming experience is picking plums and making crispy plums or the three acids (plums, roselle, and yumberry). In order to increase participation, the course adds competition and awards. In addition, the archery experience is another selling service.
The results prove that the combined courses have a strong attraction to visitors! Ms. Xie roughly estimates a basic tour group requires at least 40 people; if the tour group adds local guiding, DIY, and farming experience it adds NT$300; if the visitors want to experience the local red bean rice it adds NT$200. Before the pandemic, she received 3 to 4 tour groups per month and the highest record was 6. 
Relocation Teachings are usually ordered by enterprises and contribute 80% of the total revenue. The main customers are Huisun Experimental Forest Station in Renai Township, Nantou County, and a popular camping area. Ms. Xie pities that Bear Love Weave Home had negotiated with ASUSTek Computer Inc. and a British designer for a cooperative plan before the pandemic. However, the plans had to cease halfway for many reasons.

Not Forget Your Original Mission and Encourage Employees Think Positively
Fortunately, she has a group of hard-working employees, such as the current Project Manager who is only in her 30s but can handle all the processes from welcoming guests, reception, and tour guiding independently. Ms. Xie also reflected that a business operator might forget that newcomers with zero experience need time to build up their confidence, so providing solid training and strengthening the psychological quality of employees is also a lesson for the Operator.
About the employees' working attitude, Ms. Xie observes that it is not about the age of an employee who feels weak in mind but is more about self-identify and expectations. Employees' negative emotions are often reflections of his/her frustration.  So you can side counsel them to view the criticism as a driving force or the expectations from the customer to move them forward, which can be transformed the critics into growing nutrients and progress the employees day by day.
In addition, Ms. Xie had been encouraged by her brother-in-law, to transform the worry of losing Seediq weaving culture into the action of starting Bear Love Weave Home. As an entrepreneur in her 50+s, Ms. Xie still feels a little worried, but she is fortunate to have the strong support from Taiwan Urban and Rural Landscape and Humanities Development Association as a nurturing role behind her. She reminds the new entrepreneurs to lavage the pioneers' experiences as a shortcut so they can focus on the business requirements.
Taiwan Urban and Rural Landscape and Humanities Development Association Facebook Page
 

 

▲Business Model

▲ Camping is a popular family activity these years, there are more than 300 camping sites only in Hsinchu and Nantou. Bear Love Weave Home uses those camping sites as the Relocation Course classrooms and the courses contributes 80% of the total revenue. 

▲The main purpose of local teaching is to pass on the traditional indigenous weaving culture. By exploring the magic of making cotton threads, the Tribe's children will learn to weave life commodities, home decorations, or clothes.

▲The staff is instructing the participant to beat ramie leaves, then peel them to get the fiber, and then go through several complicated procedures to extract the threads for weaving. (Photos provide: Bear Love Weave Home)

Case Story: Multi-Employment Promotion Program
Interviewee: Taiwan Urban and Rural Landscape and Humanities Development Association (Bear Love Weave Home)

 

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Please attribute this article to“Workforce Development Agency, Ministry of Labor”