Pouchon Barbershop

Pouchon is 29 years old and he lives in a small house with his girlfriend and their two young children. They live in Carrefour which is a poor area of the Port-au-Prince region, and their particular neighborhood is one of the poorest sections of Carrefour. For a person who is born into a poor neighborhood like this, it's very difficult to build a future, but Pouchon is doing his best. He started a small barbershop several years ago, and this is currently his main source of income. Even though he is a good barber, it's hard to make a decent profit with the barbershop alone because his clientele themselves are very poor. Even though he works hard, he is struggling to even earn enough to feed his family and keep his children in school.

We selected Pouchon as a Microloan beneficiary because we see a very significant need, but we also see the kind of hard work and responsibility in him that is necessary to successfully start a business. This evidenced by the fact that he has made it this far with the little opportunity that he had. Our local staff also knows him to be an upstanding member of the community that is viewed by his neighbors as friendly, kind and respectful.

Pouchon's vision is to open a snack shop as an extension of his current barbershop. This will enable him to increase his profits by selling soda, snacks, and sundries to his customers and others passing on the street. This shop alone will increase his profits but he won't stop there. He will also leverage his visibility and reputation in the community to become a wholesaler for soda. This kind of wholesaler is called a "machann" in Haiti. The idea is that if he has sufficient capital he can purchase large quantities of soda for a bulk rate and sell them by the case to the many small vendors on the street. Of course, he can also use these bulk purchases to supply his own shop meaning that his per unit cost decreases and his per unit profit increases.

With this loan of $1000 USD, Pouchon will setup a simple street stand in front of his barbershop and he will begin purchasing cases of soda for his wholesaling business. As with all of our loan beneficiaries, he has entered into a formal legal contract with our local Microloan advisor as the EM representative. In this contract, he is scheduled to repay the entirety of loan in 5 months. He believes that he can increase his monthly profits by more than double, and he hopes to pay off the loan even sooner if possible. Pouchon is thrilled to have this opportunity to expand his business and to begin building a better life for his children.