| Afghans sell to the world online BBC
07/13/2004
By Clark Boyd
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Foreign investment has been slow to return to Afghanistan following the fall of the Taleban. But one US company is finding success in bringing Afghan goods to a global market, with help from the internet. Overstock.com's cavernous warehouse sits on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Forklifts carrying pallets shoot past tall metal shelves filled with everything from designer wedding dresses to DVDs to lawn furniture. Overstock.com specialises in liquidation, buying up small lots of products left over when companies go bankrupt or remain unsold after a sale. It then sells the liquidated goods online. "I'm ready to screw the next capitalist in a heartbeat," said Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock. Despite the tough talk, he has got a soft spot for development issues. It was during a motorcycle trip through Cambodia a few years back that he realised the Overstock model might work for craftsmen in the developing world. "Over there, there are a lot of landmine survivors, and they've trained as silversmiths and potters and such, silk weavers," explained Mr Byrne. "It occurred to me that that working with them could be a lot like the business we're already in. "We could start buying from such artisans all over the world, bring the stuff into Salt Lake, and sell the stuff at basically no profit. "The idea would be to create as much employment as we possibly could in the developing world." Booming business Three years ago, Mr Byrne started an Overstock spin-off called Worldstock. He soon found an ally in Neelab Kanishka, an Afghan native who had recently started working at Overstock. She fled Afghanistan with her family in 1989 and spend seven years in Pakistan before going to the US. It was there, Ms Kanishka says, that she started thinking about ways to get Afghan goods to far-flung markets. "We'd sit around and just for fun we'd make these embroideries. We'd hang them on our walls and everywhere," she said. "And I always thought how nice it would be if there was a company that would buy these, because we were doing the work anyways, but we weren't getting paid. So it was in the back of my mind that someone should do this." Ms Kanishka now runs Worldstock, buying rugs, jewellery and embroidery directly from Afghan artisans. Business is booming. Worldstock now has contracts with more than 1,500 Afghans, which makes the Salt Lake City company Afghanistan's largest private employer. Ms Kanishka says the company's opened a small warehouse in Kabul where they strike deals with the artisans. "They have come to our office and learned to set up an e-mail account for themselves, and then we show them the internet, and they communicate directly with me. "The plan is, within the next year, I can get everybody up and running so that if they wanted to communicate directly with me, they could do that," she said. Challenges ahead Worldstock is not without its critics, who say that selling cheaply online devalues the craftsmanship. But the Afghan government likes the idea. Mariam Nawabi, the commercial attaché at the Afghan embassy in Washington, believes that other online retailers could do with the country's agricultural product what Worldstock has done with Afghan textiles and jewellery. "Rhere's dried fruits and nuts, there's a variety of high-quality vegetables, and other products in Afghanistan that people in India, Pakistan and the Gulf region have enjoyed for years," she said. "I think there's a good marketplace for them outside that region." Long-term, she would like to see Afghan artisans creating their own retail websites. "Given the right training and access to the technology, I think quickly we will see that Afghan producers can create such websites, and international markets can directly access those products," she said. "And they'll be less reliant on the middleman just like anyone else in the world." Getting there would be a big challenge. Most Afghans are not literate, let alone computer-literate. The people at Worldstock laugh when you ask them what happens when they try to explain online retail to Afghan artisans. According to them, the Afghans see it this way: "What do you want to buy, and how much of it?" Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production
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