Quiet Start to January

It is Monday the 7th here. We have started Uike Lotu - Prayer Week.

To me this means that the tolling of the church bells that normally help prevent me from sleeping M, W and F will be occurring every day (at about 3:30, 4AM and 4:30AM.) Lots and lots of church this week. The radio continues to play Christmas music, especially reggae versions of familiar carols and lots and lots of hymns.

I hang around Nuku'alofa. I am happy to be anywhere but the campsite where I am supposed to sleep. I find that if I sit and read then in ten or fifteen minutes a small group of Tongans will sit down with me and we'll have a good chat. There are a lot of unemployed youth here. Youth means unmarried adults up into their 30s so it is a widespread issue. These guys (mainly I talk to men, lots of gender issues in this society!) are reasonably smart, reasonably well educated and bored out of their skulls. They would love to find a steady job.

Since I am a business guy I talk to them about opportunities and naturally about Tonga.

I also spend a fair amount of time getting to know local business owners. There is a class of successful Tongan business owners here. My experience has been that they have spent a lot of time overseas and operate with a mix of western business attitudes and Tongan cultural sensitivities and pride. For them there are a lot of opportunities to expand as there is little local competition and there are many (very small) under served markets here. They tend to focus on higher end customers and palangis.

I also chat with less traveled locals. One gentleman is planning to build four houses near the ocean overlooking Eua. He is using recycled building materials from Australia and has a thorough budget and business plan including anticipated rents for the four houses. Seems to be on the ball.

Then there are the followers. It is common to see a business here and want to copy it. There are way too many tiny neighborhood stores and video shops. I try to help introduce the concept of competitive mapping and roof counting. There are opportunities here, but not for additional me-too knock offs.

According to the World Bank we are one of only 3 countries (Fiji and Zimbabwe are the other 2 I think) on this planet that have contracting economies. Not an admirable attribute. All three have remarkably similar issues with capital acquisition, retention and growth. These are largely related to political stability and the perception of their rule-of-law. Tonga further suffers from her tiny available market size.

Perhaps I'll do an entry on Branding in Tonga soon. This is perhaps the only place left on Earth where a Coca Cola is exactly on par with a Shasta Grape drink.