Dear amazing students of my heart:
Today, we are convening to show you what reality is when we are committed to problem-solving. Solving issues at the commercial, financial, or strategic level should be as humanly responsible as possible. We can´t just invent or suggest premises about industries or economic sectors without substantial “real, revised, authentic” data gathering. We have already discussed this issue in the past. The point is not to be masters while studying databases, reviewing mistakes when pulling information, or redrafting if the information source (or its respective data intermediary managers) is incorrect. Last week, our strategy house oversaw certain lacking aspects of the export data-gathering phase. When we found that we were using the wrong year (2024) for our analysis, it was Friday, and I was exhausted after a long week of cleaning data, so we decided to show you what was happening instead of hiding it. For us, it is more important to acknowledge the mistake and correct it properly. For us, it is important that you learn from our experience rather than fulfill the deadline. We couldn´t proceed any further without rectifying the mishap. We comprehended the error in the United Nations and World Bank databases, and we promised to get back to you once we found a way to repair it. When we perform an industry analysis in several phases, we can´t just gather data without taking our time to review it. Now, just imagine what could happen with young professionals who use AI data and consider it as valid, and they pull data out from AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, or similar. Of course, the results will be wrong for those who rely on AI. We always use our Excel spreadsheets, we design and write the formulas, and we use dynamic tables only when necessary. We do not trust the AI models for our work. Not one centimeter on it. The OpenAI models are garbage if the information they drag from the Internet is rubbish or incomplete. Our Strategy house doesn´t use those AI models at all. Nevertheless, even by doing the analysis as it was taught to me at ABB Structured Finance in the 2000s, when filling my spreadsheets with the exports 2024 data from the World Bank and the United Nations, we found that it was incomplete. If the database of coffee and cacao trade from 2024 was incomplete, that was a gigantic mishap, or a symbol of something else. And we decided to pause and find out.

During these days, we have corrected last week’s analysis. Our framework for building assertive foundations when finding customer segments is shown below. We use the problem-solving cycle in our brains. We search for customer segments from the point of view of problem-solving. We asked ourselves who the new clients could be for the small farmers if we proceed with an AOC or a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin). How can we draft three or four correct customer segments that could raise the value of the beans? And, should we advise the small farmers to experiment with semi-finished products? Dear pupils, if we don´t choose the right customer segments, the next phase (while using the Osterwalder Value Proposition methodology) will be a rubbish waste of time. This is why this episode and the last one are the most important ones of our saga. We are entitled to apply the problem-solving cycle in several loops. And that is how it is. Better we fix it here than ruin your learning experience.

As we mentioned above, we were on step 5 of the “problem-solving cycle” while defining the customer segments, and then we found out the mistake in the 2024 Export trade databases for coffee and cacao. So we stopped our work and redid it again, but this time for the year 2023. Our findings are shown in this new material. We encourage you to read it thoroughly, please. Only then will you respect the importance of applying the problem-solving cycle “humanly”. It doesn´t matter if the analysis takes one additional week or more, but it is not possible to continue drafting proposals or developing solutions for small coffee-cacao farmers without considering fair, exemplary, reliable data we can lean on. As usual, please download the file below, print it, write notes, and ask yourself questions. You are entitled to explore the data that we have collected from 2 websites: https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/country-byhs6product.aspx?lang=en and https://comtradeplus.un.org/TradeFlow. When numbers are missed, we calculate CIF pricing averages of the top nations and search for complementary trusted information from researchers all over the world. Finally, just at the end, we cross-checked with the data coming out of the International Coffee Organization (ICO) and the International Cacao Organization (ICCO). If there is a margin of error, we have estimated it at 7.5%. However, if there is illicit smuggling in certain nations, in any of the logistic points of delivery or entrance of the flow of trade, this could be a cause of mismatch of data coming from the intermediaries or traders who buy from the humble small producers of coffee, cocoa beans, or cacao paste. Those illegal blunders are not in our remediation scope.

We kindly ask that you return next Monday, the 13th of July 2026, to review our strategic reflections on this chapter.
We encourage our readers to familiarize themselves with our Friday master class by reviewing the slides over the weekend. We expect you to create ideas that are or are not strategic reflections. Every Monday, we upload our strategic inferences below. These will be discussed in the next paragraph. Only then will you be able to compare your own reflections with our introspection. We always give our students a couple of days to prepare well before our final reflection.

Strategic reflections on this episode.
These will be in the section below on Monday, the 13th of July of 2026.

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Cacao and Coffee 101. Success Strategies for Small Farm Holders. Episode 6A.  Customer Segments Version 2.0 (Second loop). To be added next Monday.

Announcement. Dear readers, we always fulfill our promises to you. No matter if it takes longer or if we postpone our publications, be sure that there is a reason beyond the reason. Every day, we are always thinking about how we can help you to become good strategic thinkers, and nothing seems better than to teach you how it happens in reality. Since we had to remake all our data analysis from last week, our next episode will finally be about constructing three customer profiles: two for cacao and one for coffee. If we have time, we will add an additional customer profile about coffee. Our aim with the small farmers is to figure out how we can support them appropriately, in such a way that all the players of the global supply chain (coffee and cacao) could be satisfied enough with a good-sounding proposal. We are promoters of fair and balanced solutions, and we do not want to harm others in the intent. Though we are convinced that the upstream small farmers require a substantial shift in how they are operating. We will offer several new feasible value propositions, so small farmers can nourish a foundation for new business models that can help them to leave poverty behind. This work is not easy. It is not a task to ask for an AI model. It requires a lot of experience, human observation, and thoughtful analysis of reliable data. Without the truth coming from the small farmers’ testimonies, be sure that no solution is correct.

In our next episode, you will see how different it is to sell these precious beans once the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée or Protected Designation of Origin is in place.

Musical Section.
This saga is committed to elevating traditional musical instruments and their respective musicians over digitally produced sounds. This saga is dedicated to the chamber orchestras. 
Today, we have chosen the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra (NCO). For this episode, the NCO is interpreting one composition of Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn (1805-1847), a German pianist and composer, who was the eldest sister of Felix Mendelssohn.  Her musical talent was fantastic, most of the time, even better than her brother’s. Over her lifetime, there were certain famous compositions written by Fanny but unfairly attributed to Felix. The director of the Orchestra is Pekka Kuusisto; however, for the current video below, Malin Broman, a guest concertmaster, was leading the performance. https://www.kammerorkesteret.no/nco.

Enjoy!

Thank you for reading http://www.eleonoraescalantestrategy.com. It is a privilege to learn. Blessings.

Sources of reference and bibliography utilized for today´s inferences. The bibliography is listed on the last slide of the reference reading material. Click the respective URL to trace them.

Bibliography in this post: This will be added accordingly with the strategic reflections on Monday.

Disclaimer: Eleonora Escalante paints Illustrations in Watercolor. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. All are used as Illustrative and non-commercial images. Utilized only informatively for the public good. Unless otherwise stated, I do not own any lovely photos or images.