In 2008 I resigned from a job to a start snails delivery business. Yes! you read right. It was a business idea inspired by the many hints from listening to my mother’s phone conversations.
Fast track; I went to the snail market for familiarization. Before then, I’d never been to any market. I walked up to one of the market women, told her my intention and she said, “you’re lucky, the woman over there is the major dealer, she comes once every month to buy up the entire market stock. Go, talk to her, she’ll advice you”. Her advice was sound and I moved on.
I created the logo for the business, registered it with the CAC, printed corporate stationery, opened a business bank account that came with a cool cheque book and more from mopping up savings in addition to a small loan from my mum and a friend. I installed QuickBooks into my laptop, secured the agreement of a friend’s younger brother to assist me, aimed my target on the ace clubs, loungers and restaurants in Ikeja GRA. Within 5weeks I was ready to start business.
By the end of the second week in business, I had one order. In less than 6 months I was supplying half of the major big spending clubs and lounges in Ikeja. My strongest edge was that I brought to the table what these businesses were yearning for; a vendor that was truly a business and not a “market” person. Added to this, my brand outlook was irresistible.
Did you know that Global and Nigerian brands grow ever stronger with Marketing, PR and Branding. How do they do it?
They spend money, period! And that’s what I did too. Here’s how.
From the 100% of my net profit, I had a percentage removed for marketing, pushing the envelope, airtime gift, club hypemen, lifestyle, reputation building and more. All these was separate from money that was kept as liquidity for the business.
I’m talking of little fractions removed and assigned to each segment that my use of QuickBooks helped to track and cumulate weekly and monthly.
I talked about the major snails dealer earlier, Yes? I took her crown, conquered the market in one year. To be continued.
