Optimizing Business Management for MSME Growth: A Case Study of CandyCo's Empowerment

Abstract

This community service activity examined the managerial conditions of CandyCo, a crochet-based micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) in Malang, East Java, and formulated an integrated strengthening agenda across human resources, operations, marketing, and finance. The activity was conducted through field observation, interviews, document review, and participatory problem analysis with the business owner and team. The diagnosis identified four interrelated issues: specialization of artisan skills that limited production flexibility, geographically distributed artisans that complicated coordination and quality consistency, seasonal demand concentrated around graduation and gift-giving periods, and financial records that had been digitized in spreadsheets but were not yet fully used for forecasting and managerial analysis. Rather than reporting unsupported short-term performance gains, this article presents the verified managerial conditions, the practical recommendations developed with the partner, and their implications for MSME capability building. Recommended actions include a skills matrix and cross-training scheme, simple production and quality-control SOPs, more structured inventory and order coordination, market diversification through content and marketplace optimization, and cash-flow planning based on seasonal scenarios. The case shows that managerial strengthening in a creative MSME is most useful when business functions are treated as an interconnected system rather than as separate interventions