Archives for January 2010

Mr Planner

January 7, 2010 by 6 Comments

Alibaba is an interesting website. You can use it to find manufacturers and/or suppliers of almost any product imaginable. If you wish to start a retail shop, Alibaba is likely to be very useful to you. Go on and try it and see for yourself!

Do you remember drop shipping from the other day? Alibaba is one place in which you can find lots and lots of Drop shippers. What does this mean? This means that, using Alibaba, one can quickly start an online shop. Just find a supplier (drop shipper) for what you want to sell and start selling it.

Now, here’s an idea: generally speaking, it would be more profitable to start an online shop with the target market not being in Kenya. An online shop that aims to sell to Americans or Europeans is generally, usually, more profitable than one targeting Kenyans in Kenya. Because internet penetration here is still low. Now, the problem with selling to Americans or Europeans is that if you are a Kenyan in Kenya then you probably know little about foreign markets and customers. You could start your little shop and go months without a single customer.

What can you do? Well, you can hire successful and proven eBay sellers. The idea is to structure a deal with them where they sell on your behalf. Theoretically, they already know how to sell on eBay and they should be able to sell your product better and faster than you. All you have to do is make sure that at the end of the day, you make your money somehow.

Now think about it. You have used a drop shipper and an eBay retailer to sell goods to customers you know nothing about. You are making money because you had the audacity to set the whole thing up. The whole ‘system’ only works when everyone makes money and is happy. Looks like something that we should try in Biashara 30, eh?

Can it work? I have no idea! Why don’t you try it?

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With:

You Can Do It

January 6, 2010 by 1 Comment

Yesterday I had the good fortune to meet with a man who inspired me with his simple story and so I shall share it with you, dear readers. 🙂

In the mid 90s (that’s ages ago, eh?) Paul was in his 30s and had a wife and kids. He was unemployed and lived in one of the poorer parts of Nairobi. Life was a daily struggle. Paul did not mind going days without a meal but it broke his heart to think that his wife and kids could sleep hungry. Paul always always made sure that he did whatever he could to ensure that there was a meal on his table every day, even if it meant walking across Nairobi to get 70 bob.

One day was particularly dry. Paul had walked the city since dawn but had not made a single cent. Dusk was fast approaching and he did not know where his family’s evening meal would come from. He decided to visit his aunt’s house near industrial area to see if anything would come of the visit. Paul’s aunt gave him Kshs 70 and told him to “learn how to fish”.

As fate would have it, when Paul was leaving the house, he saw someone buying old newspapers at a neighbor. He immediately thought, “I can do that.” That same day, and using that same Kshs 70, Paul bought some old newspapers and sold them in town. Back then, he bought 1 Kilogram of papers at Kshs 5 and sold it at Kshs 15. After that day, Paul fully immersed himself in the business of buying old newspapers and selling them. His days were spent walking from door to door asking for old newspapers. He used to walk his way across the entire city of Nairobi!

And guess what? His hard work paid off. He built upon his small successes, little by little, and now he owns a company which has its head offices in the leafy Westlands. Paul’s advise for all our unemployed youth to stop sitting around and waiting for a job. According to him, every single one of us has something to offer the world and we all have the ability to become business owners.

What are you waiting for? Stop making excuses and do something!

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: ,

Unemployment In Kenya

January 5, 2010 by Leave a Comment

It’s a shame, isn’t it?

We help run Kazi360, which is a job board and career resource website for young professionals in Kenya. The website is still very young and has a long way to go before we consider it “successful” but it does already have quite a number of users. We attribute this to the sad fact that a large number of Kenyans are looking for jobs.

So recently I advertised a job opening on behalf of someone that I know. I set up the job ad and was subsequently responsible for screening the applicants. To be honest, I did not expect the number of applicants to be more than a few – the job was one of those low-salary affairs. But I was wrong. The response was much more than I expected to the point where I wish I had not signed up to do the screening on my own.

You know what, though? More than half the respondents were university graduates, some with Masters degrees and years of experience. The potential employer was hoping to get someone who had not been to university but what do you do when you have so many wonderfully qualified people wanting your low pay job? I’m sure anyone else who has tried looking for employees has come across this phenomenon, ama?

What does this say about our country Kenya? 🙁 We have so many graduates who are languishing in unemployment and dead end low pay jobs. How do we change this? A couple of months ago I was visiting my auntie who lives in Buru Buru. It was a certain Wednesday – a full working day. Friends, as I was walking down the Buru streets, I could not believe my eyes – there were young people all over the places. What were these youth doing idle when they should be at work, or at school? It turns out that most of them had finished college/university but just didn’t have any jobs. I am sure this doesn’t happen only in Buru Buru. The surest sign of trouble in any country is when you find the majority of the youth just….idle. 🙁

What can we do? One of my favorite solutions is encouraging people to go out on their own, to start their own businesses. Don’t sit on that pavement and wait for “the man” to give you a job, go out and get your own thing up and running! It is not that hard, trust me. Do you know that we started Like Chapaa with less than Kshs 5,000 capital? Why, exactly, can’t you start your own thing?

Here’s where you can start, quick:

So, what are you starting? How can we help?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Drop Shipping For Kenyans

January 4, 2010 by 8 Comments

“Drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer. As in all retail businesses, the retailers make their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price.” (Wikipedia)

What this usually means is that one can start an online shop without actually having any physical inventory – whenever you make a sale, you give the delivery details to the wholesaler or manufacturer who then does the shipping and delivery. The customers are usually clueless as to who actually shipped the goods. If your customers can live with a small delay between when they place an order and when they receive the goods, then drop shipping will probably be of great benefit to you. You will greatly reduce all inventory-related costs.

Can it work in Kenya?
Drop shipping probably can work in Kenya especially for online shops. Theoretically, all one has to do is locate a reputable drop shipper, and they are in business! However, one has to take into account that online shopping is still not big in Kenya.

In the pure form of drop shipping, the manufacturer/wholesaler ships the goods directly to the buyers. This is the defining feature and main advantage of drop shipping. But what if you are selling flash disks in Nairobi from a Chinese manufacturer? Letting the manufacturer handle the shipping of individual flash disks may turn out to be quite a hassle. Because of this, some retailers opt to have the goods shipped to them so that they can distribute them more easier to customers. But if you do this, you start incurring inventory-related costs.

It seems that the best type of goods to deal with are those in which it is usual for the customer to place an order and then wait a while for delivery. This would give the retailer time to place an order with the wholesaler/manufacturer who then sends the goods to the retailer/customer. What types of goods are these? Furniture, maybe?

Selling Outside Kenya
Things get easier if you are selling to people not in Kenya and, preferably, in the West. Such people are more used to buying online. As a testament to this, did you know that a good number of people who sell on eBay use drop shipping? Why can’t you be one of them? You can start today!

The thing to remember is that you are dealing with people living in far off countries and so you have to make sure that you understand the market. For instance, if you are in Kenya selling to Americans, an American shop will probably find it much easier to understand, access and serve the American market. You have to try do something about this fact.

In conclusion, drop shipping can work, even in Kenya. But, as with everything else, it is not easy.

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business Tagged With: