Ayaso Concept Store: How To Launch A Business In Morocco

During our stay in Marrakech we changed our vision of food, and in part is thanks to Monika, Ayaso’s owner, who we had the chance to meet and interview. In this article she will talk about her life, her husband, Ayaso Concept Store and how to launch a business in Morocco.

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Poland

Poland, NY, Amsterdam, Paris, then Morocco, Ireland, France, back in Ireland, and then finally Morocco.

First of all, I studied International business and management in NY, I then continued my NBA in Holland, where I was working as a night manager. I worked as well in the USA because I got a really good job: I was marketing coordinator in a language school. I met my husband at that time and we started traveling together. When I got pregnant, I decided to enjoy motherhood and I started working a bit for the Polish embassy. I gave birth in Ireland, where I was working as a freelancer for the Polish community, hiring Polish doctors for the Irish market. It was a very well paid job, but the weather wasn’t nice: at that precise moment we decided to come back to Morocco and a few time later, my husband and I launched Ayaso Concept Store. 

Yes, we have two girls, the oldest is 14 and the youngest 11 years old. And for who’s wondering, yeah: you can do business and family at the same time. The first years of Ayaso, family and friends helped us a lot with the children. We can say that Ayaso was like our third child. The key is having a good routine: my husband and I never work on Sunday, on Wednesday I go to the school of my daughters to help and create projects and the other days you’ll find me in Ayaso.

I love mountains, climbing, skiing, healthy food and healthy lifestyle. 

Leaving Poland at 21 and by myself. That was definitely a life changing choice. 

I would say I’m a customer advisor here in Ayaso and also a team manager. At the same time, I’m very versatile: I can cook and be a PR, if it’s needed. My husband is the head of the bureaucratic and legal stuff, luckily. Lately, a very good stuff is accompanying us in Ayaso and they’re really making our job easier.

That’s mainly thanks to the amazing people we met in our life. When we arrived in Morocco, my husband and I had a farm where we were completely autonomous regarding vegetables and fruits. We were vegetarians, even if we had some chickens. I personally always had the right advice for a healthy way of living, herbs, healing teas, the right remedy for the most varied things. But the game changer was meeting the pioneer of ecological agriculture and writer, Pierre Rabhi. He showed us that everything was possible, and at that moment the idea of Ayaso was born.  Everything started by the wish of sharing what we had with others. Before Ayaso, there was no bio shop in Marrakech. We needed healthy products for ourselves and that’s why we decided to create the place that would have filled our needs. At the beginning we started to work with Moroccan cooperatives, but it lasted only one year: we realised that they were not having the right bio certifications and that the quality of the products was not high enough, due to corruption. Now we work only with four or five cooperatives and we started having bio products from Europe.  

Ayaso was born on 7 June 2014 and it’s the mix of the names of our children: Maya and Sonia. Osaya, the name backwards, means “recognition” in arabic recognition. Ayaso is a way of living, a place where people in the same mood of life can meet: vegetarians, vegans, yogis and all those weirdos come here and have founded a real movement.

“You are what you eat”. Our ethic is food respect, but not only that. In fact, it’s a biggest concept of the word respect: respect for the food, but also between each other. That’s also what I want to pass on to my employees.

Around 8 months. We did everything step by step, without asking for a loan, but growing slowly thanks to our resources and Ayaso itself. 

I, as a not Moroccan, wouldn’t choose to open a business in Morocco because here law is very unstable and not precise at all. The key is to have a great accountant, alias the ring between the law and us: that’s it. There’s no need in having a lawyer, but a good accountant is more than enough. It cost us 6000 dirhams to open an official company here in Morocco, but thanks to that you can have Moroccan residency. After this first the only other expense is paying the accountant every month.

Ayaso has been the yoga center of my mother in law for 40 years. So, we didn’t struggle to search the place. Actually, my mother in law is the living proof of how a foreigner, a French to be exact, can open a business in Morocco. 

Yes, my husband. I love to work with him, we have the same vision and we managed to divide private and professional life. In this way we are two, but we produce the energy of three people. We created this business after being together for 12 years, but we worked together on other projects even before Ayaso. 

Yes, if you have a lot of money. You’ll always need to pay an interpreter to translate for you and, even more important, you’ll need to trust the interpreter. What I would recommend is to know a minimum of French or Moroccan Arabic to really build a successful business and become a local. 

As we said before, we only used personal savings. At the beginning, we made a collaboration with the deliverer and we had the products for free, but we had to pay them back once we would have sold them. In this way, we have been pushed to sell the products way quicker than if we had the money of a loan. For what concerns the interior, I believe people come here for the quality of the products and not to find a fancy place. 

We have never been scared, because without risks you don’t have anything. At the beginning our clients were mainly expats, but then Moroccans joined them. The thing Moroccans loved the most was seeing a foreigner talking about Moroccan traditional products. And I loved that!

Local producers are coming to us to sell their products, so after that their proposal we need to make a selection. For the bio European products, we have a distributor that deals directly with the producers. We became famous almost immediately because we were a unique concept in Marrakech. We have never had to pay for publicity also thanks to people and clients who talked a lot about us.

We always ask friends if they know someone who’s searching for a job and that’s how we found all our team. For the cooks, they all come from the non profit association “Amal”, which helps girls and women in difficulty. A game changing thing is having decided to pay our employees a right salary and treating them well. In this way, they work better and they love coming here to work.

The main objective of Ayaso is connecting customers to good and healthy products. Of course, I’m always here to share my knowledge about food and a healthy lifestyle. Ayaso is not only a shop: events, nutritious dishes and consciousness complete it making it what it is today.