Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lela Griessbach. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Lela, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I was born and grew up in the republic of Georgia, which became independent in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was very difficult time as the country was introduced to the new market economy policies and the transition process from the Communist era into free market economy was very turbulent, which enforced people to live in deep poverty. Similar to the majority of the population also my parents lost their jobs and as there was no financial state help there, we had to survive by doing something by ourselves. So my parents and especially my mother started to gather some products in the neighborhood in our village and sell them in the most biggest Bazar in the capital. After a while she „extended“ her „business activity“ and opened her own small food store. I was a child and followed every step with great enthusiasm. We helped our parents in every day business and learned to take responsibility earlier.

Looking back to that time I have noticed that this process not only inspired me but also influenced me very much. I would say, also my career path and my mother role. So, later, after coming to Germany and graduating my studies in Business Administration and Communication, I was very interested in assisting immigrant women in Berlin as a startup consultant. Therefore, parallel to my main jobs as a business consultant at big international corporations I always worked as a freelance trainer for women in leadership and then as an intercultural startup coach for immigrant women entrepreneurs in Berlin.

My experience from my childhood and working with immigrant women entrepreneurs motivated me very much to start a research on women entrepreneurs in volatile environments. With a focus on my home country Georgia. During this time I met and talked with many women entrepreneurs in Georgia and got a lot of insights about their motivations and challenges. Among others at that time through my research work I found out that menstrual poverty is still deep rooted in the Georgian society though mostly in rural regions, and many girls and women suffer as they do not have enough money to buy hygienic articles and do not even talk about this topic. It is in general still a taboo and girls do not have sufficient information about women‘s health and how to prevent certain issues in this regard. So I thought about how I could help them and share my knowledge with them. One idea would be to start a social project in a form of educational course. But I also realized that I needed a considarable amount of money. Through a cooking TV show in Germany where I participated and cooked some Georgian food, I got an idea, that I could print and sell nice accessories with the Georgian alphabet. And with the profits I could completely fund my own social project. To be honest there are lots of Georgians in Germany, but you can find hardly a product with typical Georgian font on it, besides Georgian wine. But not everybody drinks alcohol, right? So, the idea was born and I started my social business which I work completely voluntarily for, where I can incorporate my leadership and creative skills, but also my long-standing experience and knowledge of marketing and sales, how to build a brand and communicate with customers, how to manage social media and talk publicly about my social project and promote it.

In the meantime, with a great local NGO in Georgia we have designed a one-year educational program for girls and young women on women‘s physical and mental health and have just started with the application process. I hope very much, that this will be an impactful project and we will continue such projects in the future. As a social business I am at very beginning. But I am planning to start with my own online shop in this summer and invest more in marketing, so as many people as possible learn about us and buy our products which are excellent for example as a present. At this moment we have diverse tote bags, towels, cups, drinking straws, notice books, aprons. Everything is designed with the Georgian Alphabet or beautiful statements in Georgian font. That makes me very proud that we support not only the popularization of such an old alphabet and font such as Georgian which is one of the 14 speaking alphabets in the world, but also support the social project to empower girls and women in Georgia.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

At this moment we sell our products via an online shop for Georgian products and send them everywhere within the EU countries. In addition our products can be bought in a café-store of a lovely café in Berlin Schöneberg. For me it is very important that the products are of a high quality, therefore I chose suppliers carefully. We try to offer our products for adorable prices so that there is a good ratio of a quality and price. As soon as we have our own online shop I would like to integrate a customer review site so we are able to receive their feedback directly. This would enable us to advance our processes and achieve customer satisfaction.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think it is important to have our own webpage, even it is not perfect enough. This would enable us to better communicate our purpose and why we want to combat menstrual poverty. Many people do not even know what it is and that menstrual poverty exists even in many developed countries. So I believe, we would build awareness not only for our own social project but also for the local society in Germany by increasing our communication in this regard and addressing this important topic.

I am working on this initiative voluntarily alongside my main work, family and other activities. Therefore, the time I spend on this project is very limited and the process is unstructured. My goal is therefore to build a small team and make our social business in a more professional way. I know that this needs a certain amount of money, more time and effort, but I believe that as soon as I am finished with my Doctoral Thesis I will manage this. At this moment my priority is to get some social media advice and how to make our brand more popular. To be honest I am a marketing and sales professional and I would say I can manage things in this regard well. However, sometimes it is important to have advice from an outsider perspective even if I need to invest some money in it. However I think this would be a good investment since more and more people search for and buy products on the Internet. Therefore, it is important that we take online marketing seriously and advance our processes in this regard.

Even we started last summer and by considering our little investment for marketing we have reached some good figures in sales. Also through mouth to mouth marketing we have gained some new customers. In the café store people see our products and sometimes even if they just want to buy a bottle of Georgian wine, they also decide to take something from our products as a gift. Nevertheless, we need to increase our online visibility and place more advertisements and advance our e-commerce or social media activities to reach more people and motivate them to buy our products.

In addition, I organize a panel discussion for Georgian speaking women, where I invite guests to talk about relevant topics to women from Georgia. First, I believe that there is nothing similar in Germany and many women really need some important information provided in their mother tongue. On the other hand such events are a good opportunity to promote our products and make our social project visible.

Furthermore, I am cooperating with an NGO in Germany which provides information and assistance to Georgian and other immigrants who want to study and live in Germany, so via this NGO it is also possible to donate for our social project in Georgia. I am very grateful and very happy for this cooperation and feel even more responsible for this activity. Thus, I am very happy to see how our social project becomes successful. We are going to communicate project achievements regularly.

I am also planning to start communication with corporations and their CSR (corporate social responsibility) managers to work with me and support our social project. This could be, for example, a workshop or an event where I could speak about the challenges with regard to menstrual poverty and why we need to address it also in developed countries; how our social project contributes to breaking down gender stereotypes and supports women’s empowerment, and why it is also important for employers to know this. I would then donate the obtained remuneration to our social project.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

What helps me in addition to building brand awareness and communicating my social business goals and achievements is my own visibility for example on business platforms such as Linkedin. I regularly contribute to topics like Diversity, Women in Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and share my own experience as an immigrant working mother. This helps me to establish myself as an expert in connection with these topics. In addition, I am often invited as a speaker and interview-guest in various talks and podcasts. This is in fact my favorite activity and I love to talk about challenges and chances publicly. As a child I was enrolled in a specific seven-year music school where I played piano and participated in lots of competitions and played in concerts. Also at school I was very active in a theater group, so I think such activities helped me to train my skills against stage fright and become more courageous on the stage. I think in general, that being courageous is a very important aspect in my life, this is what brought me to today’s place and to my achievements.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mygeorgia_berlin?igsh=MWlsaDBiYWczdGk3ZQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/lela-griessbach