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:

Stealth Mode?

December 24, 2009 by 2 Comments

Sometimes I get a lot of emails from people wishing to start a new business or website. One thing that I almost always get from these nice people is that they want me to assure them of absolute secrecy regarding their project. They are afraid that if other people hear about it, then their idea will be stolen.

But is that really true? The sad fact is that no one really cares about your idea anyway. And I speak this from experience – we’ve been involved in a whole lot of projects and the level of secrecy surrounding a project does not affect its success in the least. In fact, the more secrecy there is, the less your chances of success. I bet some of you never thought about it that way, ama? This is especially true if your project involves a lot of technology.

Why? Because high technology start-ups are very very much shaped by and demand a lot of user feedback. You cannot build a perfect project while tucked away in your basement – you need people to continually test it and give feedback so that your product ‘evolves’ into something that is just perfect for your target market. This is the plain truth, dear readers.

Please have a look at: Stealth Startups, Get Over Yourselves: Nobody Cares About Your Secrets by TechCrunch.

What do you think of all this?

Filed Under: Case Study, Cool Sites, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: , ,

Simple Business Registration In Kenya

December 8, 2009 by 121 Comments


Following our call for help, we can finally report on how to register a simple business in Kenya. It is our hope that this post will help demystify business registration in Kenya and make it simpler and more accessible to more people.

How To Register A Sole Proprietorship/Partnership In Kenya
The procedure here is pretty easy and should not cost more than Kshs 900/-. Here is what you need to do:

  1. Pick out a business name that you wish to register. Write a simple letter addressed to the “Registrar General”. This letter need only ask the registrar to confirm if your chosen business name is available for registration.
  2. Make your way over to Sheria House, and to the Registrar of Companies within the Sheria House compound.
  3. Go over to counter No 1 and hand in your letter(s). You will need to pay Kshs 100 for every name that you wish to register. This is what is called “business name search”. The process takes three days to a week, max (usually). You will receive a blue receipt.
  4. Three days after handing in your letter, go back to Sheria House and show the attendant your receipt. If your chosen name is available for registration, you will receive a letter from the registrar of companies that, basically, tells you your name search was successful. You will also receive a form, Form BN/2.
  5. What you need to do is fill out Form BN/2 as completely as possible. If you are registering a sole proprietorship, the part where it says “Particulars of proprietor or partners” will bear only one name, otherwise you can put in up to 20 partners (for a partnership).
  6. Go back to Sheria House and hand in your completed Form BN/2. You will need to pay Kshs 800/-. After a week or so, you will have to go back to Sheria House to collect your business registration certificate. Congratulations, you shall then have registered a new business!

Concerning Partnerships
The process of registering a sole-proprietorship and partnership is the same at Sheria house.

However, because of the unique nature of partnerships (the fact that one partner’s actions can make other partners equally liable) it is recommended that one also registers a partnership deed that clearly defines rights, duties and obligations of all partners.

A partnership deed once drawn up is supposed to be registered as a public document at the Ministry of Lands.

We hope that someone, somewhere, finds this article useful. We shall publish one on limited companies shortly.

The map below shows the location of Sheria House in Nairobi. You can also use this link to view the map.


View Larger Map

Please do note that we have no lawyers on the Like Chapaa team. If any of the above is erroneous, kindly help us correct it. If you live outside of Nairobi and you know what the procedure is like in your town/city, please help us incorporate that information in this post.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

Freelancers & SEO – What You Should Know

December 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Freelancers mostly get paid for their time and their expertise. You go to a freelancer because you want her to do something for you that you cannot do yourself. SEO, on the other hand is search engine optimisation – it is what you do if you want more visitors to your website getting to your site through the search engines (Google, etc).

Let’s assume that like any other good and forward-looking freelancer, you have a website. Is SEO important to you?? Honestly, search engine traffic is not tremendously useful for freelancers. That’s just the truth. Unless you’re targeting extremely local markets (like “graphic designers in Kisumu”), then SEO is mostly a waste of time and money.

Why? Well, generally, the market is too big to get any appreciable amount of useful web traffic. There’s too much competition – too many logo designers, too many web designers, etc. In my experience, it is hard for freelancers to get search engine traffic that leads to actual paying customers. Believe it or not, most people who are going to visit a freelancer’s website will probably actually type in the site into their web browsers (they already know about you and your site – maybe they read it off your business card) or people who clicked on a link somewhere and got to your site.

So, dear freelancers-reading-this, if I were you, I wouldn’t spend any money hiring anyone to do SEO for you. Of course do not ignore it completely, just don’t focus on it – an online freelancer doesn’t need 1000 visitors a day to make money online. The good thing is that SEO is not the only way to market online.

How do you market your freelancing service?

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Laughs From Google

November 25, 2009 by Leave a Comment


Google’s autocomplete feature for searches can be pretty useful when you’re looking for a common search term. Hey, neat! You don’t have to type the whole thing! Sometimes, though, Google’s suggestions take a turn for the hilarious or just plain weird. A site called Autocomplete Me collects some of the strangest ones for your amusement. Admittedly, some of these might be offensive, so viewer discretion is advised.

Did you notice that Google introduced an autocomplete feature? It’s pretty nice, you don’t have to type so much – Google offers you suggestions that are often very relevant and useful. Sometimes, though, Google’s suggestions are Bizarre. A site called Autocompleteme collects the most bizarre and hilarious ones for your enjoyment. (Some may be offensive, be advised.)

Filed Under: Miscellaneous, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With:

Another Option To Raise Funds

November 24, 2009 by 2 Comments

When starting a business, sometimes one does not have enough money from his own personal sources to fund the business startup costs (‘capital’). There are two main sources of additional funding:

  1. Debt – basically you take a loan from a bank, or a friend, and agree how to pay it back.
  2. Equity – basically, you find someone to ‘invest’ in your business. They then get to own a certain agreed part of your business.

Usually, debt financing is much, much cheaper than equity financing. However, they are both sometimes unattainable for very young businesses. What to do?

Well, there’s a third source of funding. It’s not much different from debt financing but it is different enough. Basically, get someone who has some spare money and who is not a seasoned/experienced investor. Perhaps someone who retired recently and is looking for something to invest in (like a retired dentist).

You then offer them a deal: give me some money to launch my business and I’ll give you a certain percentage of my sales. Think about it – no endless meetings, punitive interest rates, complex accounting. You just pay a commission on your sales. It could work, ama?

Adapted from Seth Godin’s article.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

How To Fax For Free

November 21, 2009 by 6 Comments

So recently we’ve been having a number of dealings with organisations and people in the big USA here at Like Chapaa. We’ve had to send a number of faxes, unfortunately. Unfortunately because we consider faxing to be…old school. We don’t even have fax machines at our offices, for starters!

What to do? Well, for a while we sent the faxes the old way…but we’re internet people so we were always looking for a smart alternative. We think we found one!

How to send faxes to the USA, free of charge and via the internet
Cool, eh? It’s simple too. Just:

  1. Get a free account and US fax number from k7. K7 will give you a US number that will let anyone fax or call you. Faxes and voicemail will be delivered to your (email) inbox.
  2. Go over here [www.faxzero.com] here [www.gotfreefax.com] and send your free fax. Be sure to put in your new US fax number in the “sender information fax #” field.
  3. That’s it, you’re done!

We’ve been sending faxes (and receiving them) with smiley faces ever since we discovered this. Hopeful, some our dear readers (that’s you) will find this useful.

What can you do with this? Well, if you’re doing business with anyone in the USA, you can now get faxes and voicemail delivered to a US number and you retrieve them quickly and easily from your email.

Have you tried it yet? How did it go? What do you think?

Image courtesy of Yo Spiff.

Filed Under: Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: , ,