While walking through Shiromeda (the textile cluster), Piazza (the silver and gold cluster) or Stadium (the leather cluster), it is clear that there has been a deliberate effort to make production and retail of garments and accessories much more efficient for local producers, consumers and tourists. With many efforts to strengthen the ‘Made in Ethiopia’ brand from artisan level to state level, many of the designers who were spoken to expressed a desire for the same level of government incentives and intervention for brands that would like to service the local market.
These brands also require business financing and support, ecosystem building and training to enable them to move beyond start-up phase into the growth phase on the path to being mature businesses. This would ready them for market investment, and operating at a larger scale would greatly decrease their operational costs, and therefore the price of the finished product to the consumer.