Partners in impact: Learnings from the digitalization of artisans in Mexico

The FUNDES team with an artisan in Mexico. Photo courtesy of FUNDES.

The following is a guest post written by Gina Hollenbach from FUNDES Catalyst, an impact venture studio that aims to unleash the sustainable development of Latin America through the growth of small businesses.

Over the past three months, our team at FUNDES Catalyst has been operating the second iteration of Pymental, a marketplace of digital solutions powered by micro-learning designed to fit the digitalization needs of Mexico’s artisan community. (Read more about our pivot in our previous blog post.) Our hybrid online/offline solution leverages two complementary arms:

1. A marketplace of digital solutions powered by micro-learning videos; and
2. In-person capacity-building support for artisans and craft merchants to adopt digital tools in their businesses.

Since July 2022, we have partnered with Strive Community through their Innovation Fund to make this impact on Mexico’s artisan community a reality. Beyond financial support, being a part of the Strive Community has helped us build and share key learnings and reflections from Pymental with other partners and, in turn, benefit from similar learnings from those who share the same mission of empowering micro-businesses across the globe.

Pymental’s impact

Since Pymental’s launch in March 2023, we have trained over 3,600 micro-businesses in new digital tools for their businesses. Most (86%) are artisans or micro-businesses with artisanal processes, and 14% are other types of micro-entrepreneurs operating with manual or traditional processes. Pymental’s micro-learning web app received more than 42,300 visits, and over 3,200 artisans and micro-business owners downloaded a digital tool from the platform (and sometimes more than one!).

This impact was achieved through three distinct online and offline capacity-building strategies for artisans:

1. Digital capacity building: Paid and organic media campaigns on social media platforms focused on Pymental.com, Pymental’s micro-video platform, where artisans could watch short how-to videos about digital tools like Instagram and WhatsApp Business.
2. One-on-one in-person capacity building: Direct training with our field consultant team members to adopt new digital tools.
3. Group capacity-building sessions: Partnerships with artisan associations to reach larger audiences interested in adopting digital tools within their businesses.

Within our in-person one-on-one and group capacity-building activities, we reached more than 413 micro-entrepreneurs (230 artisans or micro-businesses with artisanal practices and 183 other types of micro-entrepreneurs) and helped each adopt an average of three digital tools¹ related to WhatsApp Business, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Platforms. Partnerships with 12 artisan associations reached a total of 268 micro-businesses (144 of whom were artisans), who adopted an average of 4.02 digital tools during these group capacity-building sessions. The majority (85%) of those who attended these sessions were women, highlighting a key impact avenue of these sessions.

The outcomes and impacts of our field strategies include:

• Post-session, 77% of group capacity-building session attendees reported an increase in the speed of their operations.
• Attendees reported a confidence score of 9.2 out of 10 to continue adopting new digital tools in their businesses.
• After the session, group capacity-building attendees reported a 2x increase in their digital knowledge and capabilities.

Learnings from building and operating Pymental

In addition to the impact outlined above, we also learned some important lessons from building the Pymental platform and from our operations.

• Simplicity first. Our first platform-related learning was from Pymental 1.0, from which we pivoted in the summer of 2022. Pymental 1.0 was too complex, and users didn’t understand the learning routes. So, we built Pymental 2.0 — a simplified micro-learning platform focused specifically on artisans, who showed the most interest in Pymental 1.0’s digitalization offering. This new platform focuses on user experience, making learning as simple as possible, with few navigation options to avoid losing users.
• Build on existing digital behaviors. We learned that YouTube was the most-used social media channel by artisans, and we created Pymental’s YouTube channel to act as an effective funnel between YouTube and Pymental’s web app.
• Know your audience and communicate accordingly. The people most interested in our content are between the ages of 35 and 65 years and prefer the simple, approachable, and familiar way that we present information. Using a peer-to-peer “looks like me and talks like me” communication strategy opened viewers’ minds to the adoption of new tools in their business. In contrast, speaking like an expert created mistrust and less acceptance of the information with our artisan audience.
• Micro-learning is an engagement winner. Over time, our team shortened the average video duration on Pymental to 1 minute 30 seconds after learning that shorter videos gained higher views and engagement. A key learning from the micro-content creation process was that content is the base of the value we can provide to artisans.
• In-person components are crucial. Our field team, who supported both one-on-one training and group training sessions, was crucial in providing the follow-up and support needed for artisans and micro-businesses to adopt these digital tools within their businesses. However, in one-on-one training sessions, we found that artisans lacked the available time needed to adopt more than one digital tool at once and required multiple training sessions to adopt the target amount of digital tools.
• Group capacity-building sessions were the most frictionless and scalable strategy but didn’t reach 100% of artisans. Partnering with artisan associations helped us train more artisans with concentrated effort, with homework assignments between sessions and individualized follow-up support. However, these associations had limited control over who attended the group sessions — we estimate that 46% of participants were other types of micro-businesses. Regardless, they demonstrated the same high interest in receiving simple, easy-to-implement training with us.
• We have identified significant demand from a wider base of micro-entrepreneurs. This insight helped us realize that Pymental’s digitalization focus benefits should be opened to more micro-businesses beyond artisans and craft merchants.

As a result of these learnings, we are adjusting the future of Pymental. In particular, we have made the decision to join Pymental with Símon, FUNDES Catalyst’s white-label B2B SaaS e-learning platform, to maximize the number of micro-entrepreneurs who can benefit from Pymental’s digitalization content. Pymental will pass on to Símon its simple user experience and its focus on peer-to-peer learning (learning from someone who “looks like me and talks like me”), strengthening the value it brings to micro-entrepreneurs.

Looking ahead

Partnerships are crucial in achieving impact in the social venture space. Partnering with Strive Community helped us understand the importance of having a partner who is willing to take risks together and who understands the importance of clear impact goals, as well as the experimentation and testing components that are often required to achieve these goals. This experimental period successfully reinforced the value of digitalization content for micro-entrepreneurs in Mexico and beyond.

We encourage the Strive Community and others supporting micro-entrepreneurs to adopt digital tools to use these insights in their own endeavors, striving to always keep the user’s needs at the forefront of all activities. We are grateful for the Innovation Fund’s support, and we look forward to continuing the digital transformation of micro-enterprises through the incorporation of Pymental’s digitalization content in Símon.

[1] Digital tools are defined as a feature of a digital platform. For example, the product catalog feature and the default messages feature on the WhatsApp Business platform are two distinct digital tools.