Our Story

How We Started

We entered this work through small shops and youth-run micro-enterprises in Addis Ababa, businesses built with effort, resilience, and strong community ties while constantly operating close to survival. At first, what we saw appeared to be a growth problem, with shops struggling to attract new customers and merchants working long hours without meaningful progress, but as we listened more closely, it became clear that growth was not the real issue. The underlying challenge was stability.

What We Heard and Observed

Young shop owners told us that their businesses survive month to month and depend heavily on a small group of regular customers, meaning that when those customers stop coming even briefly, income drops immediately. Rising rent, inflation, and unexpected shocks make planning difficult, and several merchants explained that even loyal customers are not enough to protect them during slow periods, since one bad month can undo years of effort. Many expressed interest in loyalty programs or customer incentives, but existing options felt expensive, fragmented, or designed for large businesses, leaving nothing that fits the reality of a neighborhood shop. These recurring experiences are documented more fully in our Community Essence Map.

Where the System Breaks

As we mapped the ecosystem, we saw how isolated each merchant is, with every shop building its own small customer base, customer data living in memory rather than systems, and loyalty existing without the ability to travel beyond one business. Because loyalty is cash based and informal, it cannot be shared or leveraged, which means merchants cannot demonstrate consistent performance and financial institutions see risk rather than reliability. This isolation prevents network effects, causing businesses to struggle alone instead of growing together, and the roles, constraints, and missed connections across this system are explored further in our Stakeholder Map.

Naming the Real Challenge

At first, we believed the challenge was helping merchants attract more customers, but that framing was incomplete. The deeper issue is that youth-run micro-enterprises already have trust and loyalty, yet lack a way to capture, share, or translate it into stability and growth. Without shared visibility and credible data, merchants remain invisible to financiers, partners, and even potential customers, making growth feel risky and turning survival into the primary focus. This understanding shaped our problem statement and shifted our attention away from marketing tactics toward economic resilience.

How We Changed

This process changed how we think about loyalty and growth by moving us away from seeing loyalty as discounts or points and toward understanding it as proof of trust. Trust already exists in these communities, but what is missing is a way to make it visible and useful beyond a single shop. We also realized that technology must not add burden, since merchants do not need complex dashboards or systems that demand constant attention, but rather tools that quietly strengthen what already works. Our internal shift from growth thinking to resilience thinking is explored more deeply in our Team Reflection.

The Direction Forward

This work points toward a future where small merchants are no longer isolated and where loyalty can move across businesses, performance can be demonstrated without paperwork, and access to capital reflects real community trust. Any future solution must reduce risk rather than add complexity, because for youth-run businesses, growth only becomes possible once survival is no longer fragile.