Karin001, sorry about your mother-in-law. May her soul rest in peace. And may God grant your family the fortitude to bear the loss.


Good idea about the group buying. We will be waiting for you.

Karin001:
Hello everyone.

May I first start by apologising for the silence of the last one month. This was totally unplanned for and it was a most demanding period for me littered with different kinds of personal experiencing. I must say that I was grateful for the opportunity even though I am greatly relieved that it is all over now (at least almost). Okay, I can let you into the picture; My ailing mother in-law became very ill while recovering from a recent surgery undertaken abroad. I had to sacrifice everything else and take care of her.

It was very tasking and it is such a conundrum that here in our country when you take an ill person to the hospital, a relative must take up all the duties one would ordinarily expect a nurse to perform. So, there I was in the hospital for over three weeks just attending to her. Sadly, she couldn’t survive it and passed on after great pain.

The funeral will hold this weekend and I have decided to take a breather even if it is just for one week. I need to refresh and put myself in the mental frame of mind required to think through the current economic mist.

May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Please accept my condolence.

May her soul rest in peace. God bless you and give you and your family the fortitude to bear this loss.

[quote author=mukhcech

Sorry for the loss dear Karina.May d good Lord rest her soul .

Good day nairalander, if you are intested in chinchin for repackaging whataspp me on 08130350400

matoxy:
Been following right from the beginning. It has really ginger me up. As per the chin chin, hope this can be extended to Ilorin, Kwara State.

oga carry your wahala go another place o,I don book Ilorin for my Chinchin packaging zone abeg swerve already. Am motivated

dannB:
Guys, what about fruit juice? I think it will be easily to market to target audience in as much it is quality. Also, it is FMCG product. I am sure it will also sell fast. What do you think?

pls can you tutor and enlighten me about this fruit juice?

Madam karian001 may God give you and and your family the fortitude to the the loss. please am interested in covering Anambra state.my moniker is kingkingsley

Karin001:
Hello everyone.
May I first start by apologising for the silence of the last one month. This was totally unplanned for and it was a most demanding period for me littered with different kinds of personal experiencing. I must say that I was grateful for the opportunity even though I am greatly relieved that it is all over now (at least almost). Okay, I can let you into the picture; My ailing mother in-law became very ill while recovering from a recent surgery undertaken abroad. I had to sacrifice everything else and take care of her.
It was very tasking and it is such a conundrum that here in our country when you take an ill person to the hospital, a relative must take up all the duties one would ordinarily expect a nurse to perform. So, there I was in the hospital for over three weeks just attending to her. Sadly, she couldn’t survive it and passed on after great pain.
The funeral will hold this weekend and I have decided to take a breather even if it is just for one week. I need to refresh and put myself in the mental frame of mind required to think through the current economic mist.

Karine,

Sorry about your mother-in-law. God will give your family the fortitude to bear the loss. With God there's no vacuum. Accept my condolences

Hi Karin,
Please accept my condolences.
May God comfort you and everyone who mourns her.
R.I.P Mama!

Sorry for your loss. May God grant you the fortitude to bear the loss.
Just remain strong!!!

Hello everyone. It’s nice to be back fully rejuvenated.
It was quite an experience. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.

A lot of things seem to have been happening behind the thread. Can we begin to fill each other in?

What has been happening?

Okay let me start. I just went to the market over the weekend and looked around and behold a few changes have taken place. Not so dramatic are the changes but significant all the same. Indefatigable Gala has moved up price-wise. It now sells at 70.00. I suppose that is to be expected. The attempt to increase this price has taken almost 5 years. The first attempt was in January 2011 after the anti-fuel subsidy removal riots that led to an increase in the pump price of petroleum products and its attendant impact on the prices of all other products. The attempt failed woefully. Gala was simply tamed especially as its main rivals Biggie and SuperBite decided to remain on 50 while weathering post subsidy riot inflation. It wasn’t too long before Gala reverted to the base price of 50.00.

Since then it has been a size deduction galore. Gala has had to suffer a reduction in both length and girth over the years not necessarily to retain its profitability but at least to break-even. Competition is very good. This latest increase has translated to the market rejecting the product. Only Biggie and SuperBite seem to be available here in Port Harcourt.

I also noticed that a biscuit I like has lost some weight. Hobnobs which was priced at 50 and had four slices inside had made a leap from 50.00 to 60.00 at retail level. This had brought an attendant lull in the sales. The company put on its thinking cap and then took a major decision. It appears now that they have two pack sizes running side by side; one is the traditional 4 slices pack going for 60.00 Naira and a second one for 30.00 with only 2 slices.

For the avid follower of this thread I would like you to consider this analysis and show what this entire exercise has revealed and what it portends.

It would be nice if you put up your recognition up here.

It is important that we take these happenings seriously and put them in perspective. These changes are not as arbitrary as they look, there is a lot more that can meet the eye.

In my absence, I also noticed that a few new products had been introduced into the market.

One of them that caught my attention was the re-defined cup cake from Chi Industries limited. It was christened Muff the muffin and I can tell you that it was never a hit in the market (my personal opinion though). The reigning cakes then had been Kaira, UTC and Fun times or so. Princess cakes came out with a bang offering three small cakes for 50.00 retail price.

This new cake is sold at the same 50.00 by Chi Limited.

Chi Industries also launched a new meatpie which is quite remarkable. This is the very first packaged meatpie I have seen in Nigeria. The reviews so far at least for the few distributors that I met yesterday were raving but there is a major snag; the shelf life is less than a week. This will result in very cautious buying. But all the same it is a great product that has a made a gallant entrance. Please note that every new product that comes out of any company is bound to create value for the entire system from the company itself right through the distribution dynamics so you ought to dust your shoes and get out there and grab a piece of the action before it gets too late.

The recession is for real abi?

So what can we as the traders/distributors/resellers do having watched this closely enough? Certain things do come to mind and in as much as they are not entirely new to us having discussed them earlier on the thread, we are going to revisit it and try to unveil how we can reposition our thinking to reflect and overcome this phase of our economic evolution as a nation.

I have been thinking a lot in the last few weeks and I must confess that I have decided to look critically at my business mode to see whether it is still in synch with the present-day demands.

From observation, the economy is retracting and not expanding( and this is only temporary). This naturally will result in a more careful spending culture. I sell snacks. The volume of sales now for me should be dropping, right?

Apparently, less people should be buying chin-chin and other snacks, right? But supposing I decided to really think and come out with a format that ensures that a drop in sales volume doesn’t necessarily mean a drop in my profits.

How can I go about this?

There has to be some leverage that we can adopt that will enable us retain and possibly if well tweaked may even help us improve our earnings.

All we have to do is really think.

Honestly solutions abound.

Welcome back Madam.
My heartfelt condolences.

Its been a bit drab here with you out of circulation.

Can we please come up with a plan for 2017 and hit the ground running from early January?

You finally emerged, you jewel of inestimable value.

Pls don't disappear like that again. It's very unhealthy for those of us who have not taken "action" just yet.

Welcome back and due condolences.

Dear Karin, welcome back. My heartfelt condolences to you & yours. Be strong.

Really have to put on our thinking caps. So much changes going on in the market presently.

Welcome back Karin.

followin...

Please recall that this thread is all about snacks. Any ideas on snack sales improvement and profitability should be raised here.

I saw an advert on the thread for people to buy chin-chin in bulk and to repackage it for sale. I think this is quite a bold and practical approach to resizing for the right market.

It also enables you to identify the right market and to even give the product your identity. Who knows, this could lead you along the lines of production in the future.

Just imagine; Your very own chin-chin brand.

I noticed this kind of arrangement for the first time in Benin. If you travel by road from east to west or vice versa you cannot miss the horde of people selling chin-chin in traffic within Benin metropolis and the Benin/Ore stretch of the east - west expressway.
On inquiring one discovers that these hawkers buy these products in large quantity from the producers and then repack them for sale in small sachets. The profit margin is something in the region of 30-40 percent after all expenses.

A second location I experienced this was in Zuba which is in the outskirts of Abuja. Young men predominantly of the Hausa/Fulani stock also buy chin-chin in bulk and repack to sell at the ever busy Zuba and its environs. I am sure that this model exists in some other locations in this country.

It has a few drawbacks but I also see it as a business that can only work for a certain kind of person. An ambitious and forward looking person would sooner than later be bored by this business and the pedestrian earnings that result from this activity.

Summarily, I would not advise that anyone who has long term perspective to activate this kind of business (apologies to the poster but this thread is really not for that niche). You could however get involved at the level of contract producing of chin-chin where you actually go to a major player and ask him to contract produce for you from mixing right through to packaging where the packaging is what will make you proud.

You must go beyond the level of selling unbranded products in cellophane transparencies. Anybody can do that.

Start selling a good brand and then leveraging on that brand you can create your own brand if you must and then grow it to a point where you can produce from your own stables…..again if you must.

I must say that you are quite observant Madam Karin.

After reading your last post I looked at my kids lunchbox this morning and indeed the biscuits are now paper thin.

I also took a sip from a coke bottle with my daughter and must say that the drop in sugar levels is very obvious.

Thank you for bringing this to our notice. Some of us just plod along daily without observing anything closely.

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Madam Karin, my condolences to you.

Unfolding events have confirmed what I thought was a bit twisted about us citizens of this great country. We lack staying power. Today I attended the launch of a new product here in Port Harcourt and there several people in attendance especially those of us seeking new streams of income.

As was expected women were in the majority. Sadly, all most of us could see at this launch were the negatives. How expensive the product would be and how the customers would turn it down and so forth.

I was aghast. Nobody seemed to want to view it from another perspective. If one were not invited as an individual, I would have thought that the audience had met before the launch event but this wasn’t the case even though everyone spoke in one voice.

All of a sudden and from one corner a certain young man in knee length jeans (very obviously, a trader) stood up and began to ask some questions about the product and the marketing plan. The answers were provided by the panel carefully and the young man fired on. More questions begetting more answers. The important thing here was the fact that he kept approaching different angles of both the product, the company and the business plan with the objectivity that was previously lacking in the room.

The room was so quiet that if you had dropped the proverbial pin you could hear it drop. With his not so sound yet passable English backed by cognate experience drawn from the course of apprenticeship, freedom and running his own show successfully he steered the conversation in his preferred direction and eventually got something most people in the house thought was impossible.

As a matter of fact, some people had already left in frustration before this trader stood up. At the end of the discussion he was invited to the ‘other’ office for further discussions.

You can imagine the flurry of questions that followed at this point. So many and so varied.

Case in point here is that appearance may not always reflect the reality of the situation. An item, product or situation seen from only one perspective may only result in a one-sided conclusion.

This meeting was all about introducing a new product into the market place. And all we were thinking of was how we can benefit from the margins that the market could permit. The actual margin for a 50.00 product in this case was rather minimal. Actually, very minimal. It just wouldn’t justify the investment and effort put into marketing it. So here we were all distraught and looking at it from a very negative perspective.

And then this young man comes in with a very fresh perspective.

The product is a new chin-chin brand that has been launched recently in Otta, Ogun State. The product has been served as a constituent in an inflight snack pack by one of the local airlines. They decided to come over to Port Harcourt to see if they could take advantage of the market here in particular and Eastern Nigeria in general.

The offer they were making amounted to N42.00 per sachet (N2,100.00 per pack of 50) as sold to us bulk buyers and they requested that we sell to the retailers at the price of 45.00 (2,250 for 50 sachets) and the retailers will in turn sell it for 50.00. Reasons being predicated on the cost of raw materials.

For us all it just wouldn’t work out that way as all we could see is the marginal 2.50 per sachet amounting to only 125.00 per bag. And that margin will take care of the logistic costs like offloading into our shops/homes, staff salaries, rent, other bills including the fueling/transportation involved in marketing this product in our various territories.

Now it must be made clear that we bulk buyers are used to making something substantial from our sales and the standard is usually 500.00. Where a product is already well known and fast moving then we may be willing to reduce the margin to as low as 250.00 per bag of 50 sachets.

When the gentleman stood up to begin his questioning, he completely ignored the price element and kept asking questions about the product and their delivery methods/frequency.

He kept increasing the stakes interposing his speech with a lot of large sales figures. One could see that the Lebanese panel was completely swayed.

The young man finally went for the jugular when he asked them if they could supply a trailer load of the product to him at Ariaria market in Aba?

They responded in the affirmative.

He then went to ask them what incentive they were willing to give him for buying that quantity?

We all gaped at this guy imagining if he was just crazy. Here was a company not willing to budge on its prices but here he was asking for incentives.

Guess their response?

They asked him how much he was willing to invest and he responded that he could muster 5 million Naira. These guys almost fell of their seats and after whispering among themselves rapidly they conceded that a serious incentive could be arranged if he was willing to pay for that much immediately. That guy became the toast of the event.

Frankly speaking the meeting had end abruptly. The Lebanese company had perhaps exceeded their target for the East in one order.
My findings subsequently, revealed that these guys only came to try out the waters and were hoping that they could send in only about One Million Naira worth of products initially and here they were surprised to the hilt.

And the guy….. we all gathered around him after the event and he confessed to us that he wasn’t planning on investing that kind of money for a new product but that he just needed to confirm their flexibility in terms of pricing. On how he intended to go about it now; he told us that he will buy the goods and resell them at the cost price while ensuring that his rebate/incentive would be his NET profit. Vintage!!!!!

This was just too cool to be true.

Right in my presence some women registered immediately with him as off-takers.

I hope this was not unnecessarily long and boring.

Just take the message from here and ensure that you always view every product, service, circumstance from different perspectives.

Always recall the fable about the blind men touching the different parts of an elephant and describing it according to their feel.

None of them could actually describe the whole. They could only describe a part which reflected their perception of that part.

We are wont to conclude and without any effort that immediately our principal or colleague or even a prospective customer states a position that it is etched in concrete and steel.

This is far from the case. You must always reassess a situation for strengths and possibilities which may sometimes lurk in the corners of the proposal/proposition.

In every situation, you must always consider what advantages must accrue to you while keeping the other party in business. This is important. Ensure that this is entrenched in in your souls and must be the driving force of your staying in business.

Two personal incidents that I can share come to mind.

When travelling along Nigerian roads you always come across several hundred Dangote trucks hauling his cement all around the country. The greater advantage of this business does not accrue to Aliko Dangote.

The greater beneficiaries are the distributors, re-sellers, masons, contractors, home owners, banks, insurance companies and the GDP at large. Should Dangote Industries experience losses the greater loser will not be Aliko Dangote but the entire scope of the opposite side of the spectrum.