Sometimes, you are not fully prepared to deal with an emergency, such as a car breakdown, just when you intend to travel out of town for business. In addition, your savings may not be sufficient, and your friends are unwilling to part with the sum you require. So, what do you do?

Pawnshop loans are an expedient way to access cash in an emergency, and all you need is collateral to take out the loan. Nothing else. Most pawnshops will take vintage turntables, musical instruments, firearms, jewelry, digital camera gear, and the latest electronics such as smartphones.

However, certain items such as toys, damaged goods, and old technology devices are rarely accepted. There are several instances where the pawnshop loan is the best option. Here are the major ones:

In an Emergency

Pawnshop loans are quick and easy for emergencies. As long as you have collateral to hold the business when the loan is still pending, you are eligible. They don’t need a credit check to qualify or go through a rigorous application process. This comes in handy when you need quick cash to cover an emergency.

Pawnshop loans may be less costly than the penalty for utility reconnections or credit card repayment and so is an excellent option to prevent further charges.

While these loans are a bit more costly than conventional loans, you get the cash on time to take care of the emergency.

According to the National Pawnbrokers Association, $150 is the average amount given as a loan by pawnshops. This is sometimes sufficient in an emergency.

Typically, the pawnshop loans will not affect your credit score in any way, and you are free to walk away from the loan without paying a dime. The pawnshop retains your item, and they can sell it to recover the borrowed sum. But you have the option to extend or renew the loan of the agreed period to repay lapses.

Bad Credit

Sometimes, you may find yourself in a bad credit situation that limits your access to loans. This is where pawn loans come in.

Pawnshops provide convenient and easy access to loans, especially for people that don’t have access to conventional loan facilities for various reasons. For example, it could be a bad credit score or missing documentation to fulfill the requirements.

You don’t need to have a good credit status for you to qualify for a loan. Take your name-brand musical instrument to the pawnshop for evaluation, and you get the approved loan amount. The item guarantees the loan, and there is no risk to the pawnshop. You won’t get harassed by debt collectors, and there is no legal requirement to repay.

Apart from the collateral, you must show you are above 18 years old and prove your identity.

You Have Lots of High-Value Items

You could be having a basement of valuable items you’ve chosen to hold on to because of their sentimental value. These items can unstick you from certain situations that you find yourself in by taking a loan against them. But you will need to prove ownership of the item to avoid dealing with stolen goods.

You need to pay the whole agreed amount to get your item back. When you accept the loan amount offered, you walk away with a pawn ticket and cash. You need the ticket to get your item back.

There’s an option of selling the item to a private buyer or even the pawnshop. This way, you get the cash without paying interest or fees on it, but you will have to deal with losing the item permanently. With pawnshops, you still have the option of getting your item back, unless you choose not to.

Manufacturing highly depends on the strength and ability of the team members. The management level staff has to work with the employees working on the assembly line to achieve success. While we have witnessed various technological advancements in the manufacturing industry recently, quality assurance and leadership training are essential for the efficient operations of any company.

Leadership skills are important when it comes to elevating every aspect of manufacturing operations. Great leaders help their team members avoid workplace accidents and do the job properly for the benefit of the company. If you are planning to introduce a manufacturing leadership-training program in your company, here are the main benefits to expect.

• Increased Productivity

Leadership in manufacturing businesses is about understanding the aspects of the manufacturing processes and perfecting them. You have to understand all the raw numbers in regards to produced units and the targeted profit margin.

Further, you have to know how to make the numbers bigger. Cost reduction is hard to achieve when the used materials are of great quality. For that reason, you have to focus on producing more items or improving the efficiency of your production lines.

People control every aspect of production. So, you have to know how to make them happier and inclined to increase the output. Ensure that your workers are healthy and committed to work. They should also show good work habits.

• Improved Organization Culture

Culture is important in defining a workplace. We can define culture as the professional and social environment that managers and employees use for effective production. If your manufacturing organization has a bad culture, then your employees may get disillusioned and even join your competitors.

Good leadership training will help you define your workplace culture and work on worker satisfaction. A quick example, good leadership training will help you redefine the communication methods in your organization for easier identification of issues affecting the operations. According to Iskander Makhmudov, employees are happy to work in organizations with a good culture. They also work hard to see it succeed.

• Employee Retention

You would not want to see your highly skilled employees leave, particularly when they leave to join your competitors. So, one of the best things to do is identify the problems that might influence your workers to leave and address them. Most employees leave when they believe that their input is not appreciated or the organization does not help them grow. Leadership training can help you address such problems.

Furthermore, good leadership training will provide your managers with the skills they need to help employees grow. Leaders have to understand the needs of their subjects and craft new ways of making them better. For instance, they can define the pathways for career growth so that the employees can be aware of what they need to get higher pay or climb the management ladder.

• Better and Efficient Goals

Clear leadership motivates the employees to work towards some specified goals, particularly if the goals are connected to the mission of the company. For example, an increase in efficiency levels and the development of new brands will prove to employees that their work has an impact.

Good managers set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-framed) goals. Such goals are more important in manufacturing organizations where prices are predetermined for any job and an increase of the units produced can have a big effect on the bottom line. SMART goal setting allows employees to work hard to achieve something. It also supports a feeling of contribution and accomplishment.

Conclusion

If your goal is to see your manufacturing business grow, adopting progressive improvement at every level is important. That is the key reason you should include your leadership training in your operational strategy. Leadership training ensures that your management and operational level staff are more efficient and effective.

Many young, simple and effective initiatives are making a difference in Africa. This is the case of the start-up SillonBlue in Goma.

It is 8 o’clock in the morning in Goma. In the offices of the start-up SillonBlue, the young agents of the company are in the middle of a meeting to share the tasks to be carried out during the day.

Two years ago, these young people created a start-up to meet the needs of several Congolese merchants who want to sell their products online. A few years ago, these young sellers could not do so because of the high cost of creating and hosting a website.

Useful link: Africa Employer of Record

African telemedicine initiatives

A start-up changes things

SillonBlue accompanies young economic operators in the creation and the setting on line of their stores in order to ensure them a better visibility on the digital market and in the eyes of their potential customers. The latter can then submit their orders in a simple, fast and secure way.

Othniel Pilipili, co-founder of the start-up SillonBlue, explains how online stores work and the motivation behind their initiative.

“It’s very simple, you have an online store and you sell for example computers, clothes … You come on the platform with your phone, you create your profile, you add products and their details and there you will have a page that is equivalent to a website. When you have orders, you will have them in your dashboard and you will answer them by making a delivery. Our motivation was to integrate the latest technologies in our country, we saw that it is necessary to implement the right technologies in our community.”

According to Othniel Pilipili, the digital approach meets the needs of the community by giving sellers of goods and services the opportunity to expand their business by accessing other online sales opportunities.

Virtual stores

In Goma, many young merchants have already created their online stores. This allows the network to grow, according to Othniel Pilipili.

“This technology meets the needs of the population. To be visible and to tap into new opportunities is a priority for the owners of online stores. When they start using this technology, we always see an impact that it creates. And we realize that we are working in a good way. In Goma we have more than 26 stores and our community has more than 50 people and it’s still growing, this is in Goma alone.”

Among the holders of online stores – thanks to the tool developed by SillonBlue – is Odon, a 20-year-old entrepreneur.

For more than two years, Odon has been selling computer equipment. Today, his online store sells products to customers outside the city of Goma.

“In our store there are several products.  We have phone covers, computers, printers and all the computer tools. For me as a trader, it is really efficient with the system of online stores. We have easy access to many customers coming from everywhere”, explains Odon Kibwana, a computer reseller.

Job opportunities

Today, SillonBlue employs about thirty people, including young girls who are passionate about digital technology, such as Esther, a computer science student. For her, women must be as innovative as men in the digital sector.

“The role I play in the system, I do the presentation of the system to the customers and servants who don’t know anything about it, so I explain the functionality of the system. I am doing computer science at ISC, and I wanted to develop my knowledge in technology more. I don’t limit myself to what I learned in college, I want to develop my skills. In my opinion, the abilities that men have, women also have. I would like to encourage women to go into technology, because they can contribute something.”

A regional ambition

The expected results of the Congolese youth’s innovation do not give them time to rest on their laurels, however. On the contrary, they are motivated and ready to pursue their dreams, improving their creative spirit.

The start-up SillonBlue hopes to expand its field of action in the coming years.

“There are several features that we will review to make some procedures automatic. We want to reduce the time creation of an online store, from 10 minutes to 3 minutes. Our official headquarters is here in Goma, but we have the objective to cover the whole country. But we also aim to integrate other African countries in the system, such as Cameroon, Gabon etc. in the near future”, says Othniel Pilipili, co-founder of SillonBlue.

If in big cities, online sales are booming, this is not yet the case in other regions of the DRC, due to the fact that many people are not yet connected to the Internet or they do not know how online sales work.