Women entrepreneurs expend into digital sales

The Parkosadze Winery is located at the foot of a mountain, at the highest point of the village of Chikha in Sachkhere Municipality. For more than 60 years, the Parkosadze family has been making sparkling red and white wines from grapes harvested in vineyards scattered on the slopes.

“Since 2022, we have also had a label, Parkosadze Wine, which features our family coat of arms,” says 34-year-old Mariam Parkosadze, a lawyer by profession and a certified specialist in viticulture and winemaking who is actively involved in the family business. “We are originally from Racha, and in the vineyard, we specially preserve the oldest sapling of the local grape variety, Alexsandrouli, which our ancestor brought from Racha. Now its taste adds an additional touch to the wines made using the Parkosadze’s European and traditional Imeretian technology.”

Mariam is one of the participants in the project “Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Georgia”. The initiative helps women entrepreneurs acquire new knowledge and skills, establish useful business connections, make their products available to more and more consumers through e-commerce platforms, and develop their own businesses. It is implemented by UN Women in cooperation with the Georgian Farmers’ Association and the Georgian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The project also includes cooperation with Alcoshop.ge, the largest Georgian online platform for premium alcoholic beverages. As a result of this partnership, a special section highlighting wines made by women entrepreneurs was created on the online store’s website, and more than 20 products by women winemakers living in different regions of Georgia have already been featured. Among them are wines by Mariam Parkosadze.

“For women winemakers, the opportunity to sell online means a fast, effective and short-term, results-oriented opportunity that is important for the success of our business and the empowerment of women winemakers,” notes Mariam. “This allows us to increase awareness and the number of sales and to be an example for other women who are still in the planning stage.”

It is noteworthy that one of the important challenges for women entrepreneurs in Georgia today is the development of alternative sales spaces and remote sales channels. Accordingly, partnerships with online platforms can have a positive impact on their business activities.

One more step that UN Women has taken to promote products by women entrepreneurs is a partnership with the online platform VELI.store. Currently, the online store offers textiles, jewellery, accessories, wine and other products created by more than 150 women entrepreneurs. Among them are six women entrepreneurs who were connected to VELI.store by UN Women and were given the opportunity to take product photos that meet the standards of the online store. All six entrepreneurs are participants in UN Women projects.

One of the main directions of UN Women’s work is the economic empowerment of women, and a significant part of this focus includes the development of women’s entrepreneurship: supporting the women entrepreneurs themselves in starting new activities and expanding their existing businesses.

The initiatives to promote the digital sales of women entrepreneurs are part of the Women’s Economic Empowerment component of the project “Good Governance for Gender Equality in Georgia”, which is funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).