₦airaland Forum

I like this frank opinion. Many people will not want to openly admit this fact that good things like a safely constructed foundation cost. May God bless your efforts.

MsChicxoxo:
Yes I concur with that about making your foundation very solid. I just spend 5m naira on foundation only for a storey building. At first it was a pain in the ass but is worth it in the long run.

Thanks for your contribution and making us all see that this isnt a time to deflect responsibility. It is time we all faced our issues objectively rather than comparing ourselves with those who share same plight.

Interestingly, the people who died in all the building collapse listed are all Africans and not BBC staff or Europeans, if they are pointing out our flaws on our behalf, then we should take heed

Quakertellicus1:
Don't bother about India......we have a serious problem with bad buildings here in Africa....and if this article makes African countries take serious action on building standards....then everyone here wins.

Nigeria is one of the countries in the world with the most expensive cement price. We can relate with your Egypt experience. We had a first hand experience of home construction in Rwanda and the attention to details even from the artisans was so impressive.

Phonefanatic:
I was amazed when I saw Egyptians laying foundation of a building in Egypt. A hole as big as a bungalow was opened then filled with iron rods, Cement and Granites.... The cement alone go reach Naija Engineers build 5 duplex.

Secondly I noticed their cement is about N350 per bag and once mixed it gets dried in not more than 30mins.

After a building collapsed in Kenya last week, killing at least 33 people, experts look at some reasons why such incidents occur in Africa.
The six-storey residence in Kenya's capital Nairobi came down in heavy rain, with more than 80 people still missing.
While investigations are still underway into the cause of this collapse, we look at some common problems.

1. The foundations are too weak
Adequate foundations can be costly.They can cost up to half the price of a building, observes professor of civil engineering Anthony Ede at Covenant University in Ota, Nigeria. He says two things should be considered when you are building the foundations - the solidity of the soil and the heaviness of the building and its contents.

In the commercial capital of his country, Lagos, the swampy ground requires strong foundations. Far stronger than solid ground.
But he says developers save money that should be spent on foundations when building on the city's swampy ground and many buildings have collapsed in Lagos as a result.

Even on solid ground, foundations need to be strong enough for the load.
Inadequate foundations for a four-storey building was one of three reasons given by investigators for a building collapsing in northern Rwanda in 2013 and killing six people.


2. The building materials aren't strong enough
Materials that just aren't strong enough to withhold the load are used, says Hermogene Nsengimana from the African Organization for Standardisation, whose organisation met last month in Nairobi to discuss why so many African buildings collapse.

He suggests there is a market for counterfeit materials - going as far as to say that sometimes scrap metal is used instead of steel.
When a six-storey building in Uganda's capital Kampala collapsed in April, the director of the city authority suggested it had been constructed with counterfeit materials, reports Ugo news site.

Mr Nsengimana says there are even cases of counterfeiters faking authentification certificates. But he suggests contractors also knowingly use the incorrect materials to cut costs. So they may use concrete intended to bear the load of a one-storey building in a four-storey building.
Mr Ede adds that this is something regulators are not policing.


3. Workers make mistakes
Even when workers are given the right materials to make the concrete, they mix them incorrectly, says Mr Ede. This results in concrete which is not of the sufficient strength to hold the load.

He accuses developers of cutting costs by employing unskilled workers who are cheaper than trained builders.
This is one of the reasons put forward by civil engineers Henry Mwanaki Alinaitwe and Stephen Ekolu why a building in Uganda collapsed in 2004. Their research shows that the workers misunderstood the mixing ratios of the concrete. It suggested that people used wheelbarrows instead of measuring gauges to measure cement. The five-storey BBJ new hotel collapsed in construction and 11 people died.

"You find bricklayers and even technicians calling themselves engineers," cautions the president of the Nigerian Institution of Structural Engineers Oreoluwa Fadayomi in Nigeria's The Punch news site.

To those who want to save money on professionals, he advises: "One should not be penny wise and pound foolish".


4. The load is heavier than expected
Mr Ede says a building collapses when the load is beyond the strength of the building. He gives the example of asking a baby to carry a heavy box: "The baby will not be able to withhold the strain."

Even if the foundations and the materials are strong enough for what they were originally built for, that purpose may change.
So, Mr Ede says, if a building was designed to be a home and is then turned into a library where boxes and boxes of books are piled up, the building may strain under the weight.

He says another reason why the load is often heavier than the original design is because extra storeys are added.
In March an upmarket apartment block which had more storeys than planned collapsed in Lagos, killing 34 people the Guardian reported.
This came two years after a church accommodation for the famous preacher TB Joshua collapsed, also, authorities said, because it had more floors than it could hold. In that case more than 100 people lost their lives.


5. The strength isn't tested
At all points of construction the strength of the building should be tested, says Mr Ede.
"You have to be strict," he says, about policing building.
"The law says you must test. It's the enforcement of the law which is the problem," he says.

That's a big problem, he says, when at every stage of construction there is someone with a strong motivation to save money or take money.
There are many physical reasons a building can collapse but only one driving motivation for that to happen, says Mr Ede. That's money.
And for him this is the real reason buildings collapse - corruption.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36205324?SThisFB

“Keep showing up every day and trying to get better. Don’t count yourself out." – Ellen Chisa

Every moment is a lesson for us as entrepreneurs, and in the tech start-up world where things move so fast, it would be a sad thing to be left behind. My team and I had quite a tough time taking off on the ecommerce runway, especially being an online marketplace for building materials. So far so good, but we are still aiming for the best. Here are some of the lessons I have learnt from running an ecommerce store.


PICK YOUR NICHE
Each time I mentioned to people that Cribpark is an ecommerce platform, they’d give the look of
“Again?, another ecommerce platform?”
But when I added that we are an ecommerce marketplace for building materials, then they are like
“Oh, that’s cool. A new twist to ecommerce”.
With Jumia and Konga having raised about hundreds of millions of dollars between them, you are better of picking a niche or you will just be a poor man’s Konga.com. When you pick a niche, pick one you understand quite well and be the best at it. Even Amazon started as an online bookstore.

When we started as an ecommerce for building materials we realised most of our early clients were people who were building for the first time. They knew little about construction and didn’t want to be held captive by their contractor’s advice. Since our team is dominated by civil engineers, it was easy for us to give them information about the materials they were buying that their suppliers and contractors did not know. They were not just paying for the product, they were also getting free valuable information. Picking a niche helps you to focus your best effort, and you really don’t want to be spread too thin.

Remember those days when shopping started and ended in Yaba market; if you were just shopping for jeans, you were more likely to buy from someone who only sold jeans in his/her shop, than the one who sold all types of clothes including jeans.


CREATE A BRAND
Your brand is your promise to your customer, it is what they expect from your company when they think about you. It may sound too early talking branding, but you will reap the benefits early too. You want to understand what your brand is? Well, ask your customers to leave an anonymous feedback. Last year I had a meeting with one of our B2B customers Engr Ken. He was referred to us by a B2B customer and had done a transaction of over 1 million naira. Towards the end of the year he had been so impressed with our performance and asked us to have a meeting. We discussed for about an hour and you’d think it was a friend reunion even though it was our first time seeing each other. We discussed the building industry, attitude of suppliers and laughed about our first delivery.

What happened in our first delivery? The supplier supplied an inferior quality of sharp sand but Engr. Ken wasn’t on site during delivery. Normally, we only pay suppliers when customers indicate satisfaction, but since he okayed the delivery, we paid the supplier. On getting to site to see the quality of sand he was less than impressed. He called us to state his displeasure and how the supply would implicate him as a contractor. We were concerned and ordered the supplier back to the site. The supplier agreed that the quality didn’t meet the requirements he promised. The sand would have to be used for another site purpose than they intended. Instantly we paid Engr Ken 50% back for what he paid for. We would later deduct the money from the supplier from other deliveries he made. The money couldn’t change the situation, but at least it showed we cared more about his project than our profit. That was also the last time we had such issues as we had to tighten our loose ends.

During the meeting, Engr Ken talked about how he was impressed with how we handled the situation and always ensured the suppliers did the right thing. Through his words and other clients’, we could see they saw us as a reliable company that puts customer first ahead of every sale.
Customers are not dumb, they know when you put them first, and they return because you gave them an experience and not a product. Such mistakes may happen once in a blue moon, but it is in such cases brand promises are verified. Show what your brand is, don’t tell. Yes we lost about 20,000 naira, but it is nothing compared with what we gained from him in over 8 repeat sales.


GO THE EXTRA MILE
Call Cribpark at anytime and we are ready. We have received calls by 6am, 10pm, 11pm and once by 1am. When they apologised for calling us late, we were quick to let them know it was no problem for us at all. I remember a weekend I had the customer care number with me, it was a few minutes past 1 am on a Sunday morning and I received a call. I checked the time, picked the call, and didn’t act like it was unusual. The customer was on our site checking all the items he wanted to buy and I had the pleasure of running him through our value offering. It happened that he was looking for a single place he could buy all his sanitary wares and other furniture fittings for his new house. We talked for almost half an hour and sealed a deal worth millions through it.

As a start-up, there is no point forming office hours except you have another guarantee of salary at the end of the month. Our office hours is anytime a customer is able to reach us, through calls, emails, or even in our dreams, as long as we can be reached, we are open. The extra mile is a huge differentiating factor for start-ups to break out and it could come in different ways.

We had a client who was running out of sand on the day he was constructing his German floor. He called us by 12noon and said he needed it by 2pm. We once did same day delivery for him, but even this was a challenge. We called the supplier closest to him and were able to convince him to make the delivery out of his existing busy schedule. We called our client back to say we wouldn’t make the 2pm delivery but 3pm was possible. He was excited we could even promise to deliver as you don’t normally find it easy getting such items during the day except you ordered a day before. We delivered by 2.55pm and till today he remains one of our best customers. Word going round says we are his most reliable supplier too. Repeat purchases from him are over 17 across 9 months.


DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU
If you don’t know the way, follow those who have been there, over time you will discover the path to follow. When we fully launched in June last year, we developed quite a robust infrastructure for people to visit the website, browse easily and make an order. One of our mentors was a UI/UX lead in Oracle who gave us unique insights; our interface was awesome.
To our surprise we realised that most users would visit the platform, browse through the products and rather than click “add to cart” would prefer to call our customer care. After the first transaction, most repeat orders from these customers would continue on Whatsapp. Infact most users asked if they could chat with us on Whatsapp. They completely bypassed our designed order process. Chat might just be key in the future of ecommerce customer relations because people want a more personal experience. Overtime, when we realised people liked to have the phone numbers more than “adding to cart” we simply made our phone numbers more visible on the site and same thing applied to our marketing efforts.


MARKETING
We started using Facebook and twitter and SEOs. Great tools. Facebook helped us reach a lot of people and had a decent conversion while twitter got more engagements but with little or no conversion. Overtime we were running out of money and we had to look for other ways of gaining new audiences without costs. We tried nairaland as the posts were free anyway, we secured a partnership with a major classified Ads site, and also did some on-ground marketing. It worked! We had new customers and more sales. Sometimes not having what you want makes you more creative. Now we explore more of content marketing as we have realised that it creates a bond with the target customer and also helps break down trust barriers. If you are running on a low budget and are quite creative, you should try a mix of different platforms and strategies. The world is not a plain surface; don’t stick to the status quo, for it is your duty to create your audience.


BE THE MARKETPLACE PLEASE!
It was February last year when we had just decided to pivot into building materials and be a marketplace. The following week Cristina Stenbeck the chairwoman of Kinnevik was in Rwanda. Kinnevik owned Millicom which owned our incubator in Rwanda then, so Ms. Stenbeck decided to pop-in and have a discussion with the innovators. It was an opportunity to learn from someone who had invested over 2 billion dollars in ecommerce. We told her about our initial foray into home furniture and services and our decision to focus on being a hyper-local marketplace for building materials. She was impressed to hear we would be a marketplace and explained from her experience that the ecommerce marketplaces was easier for start-ups than the traditional ecommerce model as there was very little or no inventory and logistics to worry about. For someone with huge experience in ecommerce, validating the marketplace and business model meant a lot to us and in reality it turned out the right path to tread.


FOCUS ON THE RIGHT METRIC
There are many metrics that matter to a start-up, but focus on the most important. For me, I believe beyond the GMVs, LTVs, and CACs, the customer success is the most important. Why? Because we might be in business to make money, but since we are not robbing people, we have to make money by making customers happy. It makes no sense to acquire 100 customers in January and 99 don’t bother to buy from you again.

How many customers have you had?; How many have come back to buy? ; and How many of those who came back have referred you to other customers? Customer retention is very important and to achieve it don’t just focus on selling but give your customers an experience they can’t get on other platforms. Give them a reason to come back. Don’t let your customers feel they clicked the wrong link again. Most times people only come back when they have been well served or you are solving more of their problems.


RUN LEAN
In our first 6 months of ecommerce operations, we focused on furniture, interior decor and home services. We made just $1,000 in revenue and then we got seed investment of $15,000 from our incubator. We pivoted to building materials and now that we are in our 9th month as ecommerce marketplace for building materials, we have had sales transactions of about $150,000, and spent just about $5,000 running the business. We are currently a team of 3 working full-time and we have spent less than $500 on marketing. Having team members with diverse competencies has been a huge benefit as it lowered our cost of personnel.

Running lean is important because funding may not come as expected, market demand may fluctuate and some assumptions might be painfully unreal, but the reality is that if you run lean you will have a low burn rate and a high run way. This gives you enough time to test your model, make several iterations and be prepared for scaling up. Running lean simply means looking out for the most, in a less costly but highly effective way to run your business so that you don’t quickly run out of money. There are a limited number of times you can lean on friends and family for financial support, so if you don’t run lean and grow the right numbers, you may have a good product but you would have had to close down long before striking gold is in view.
Warning: By the time you are done running lean, you may end up looking like a fashion model, but at least you have a sound business model.


FAIL FAST, SCALE
I didn’t quite understand what failing fast meant though I was using to the word. It is this simple: As entrepreneurs we think we know our industry quite well and understand the pain points, so we design a solution. Overtime we realise that in most cases though the need is there, but customers are just not buying into us. Then we sit down to understand the customer better and design a process that follows the customer’s footprint. This often means trying different things most of which will fail, but you only have to get it right a few times. Since you are going to fail in most features anyway, why not fail fast so you quickly know what doesn’t work and then focus on what works. At the beginning it is also important to do what works even if it doesn’t scale, as that may quickly differentiate you from others and make you unique. Those little things like extra attention you give the customer may not all be doable when you scale, but at least you will get the numbers that makes scaling the next logical step.


FINAL WORDS
Am I sharing these business experiences and tips like someone who has finally arrived? Capital NO!. In this part of the world, we tend to think that writing a book, giving tips and talking at seminars to eager audiences is only a duty for those who have ‘made it big’ and have gotten it all perfected. Well, I do not belong to that school of thought. There is need for shared peer experiences.
My experiences till date as CEO and co-founder of this unique e-commerce business niche have been filled with an almost balanced share of ups and downs. The simple truth is that success has no silver bullet. What has worked for me and my team is the fact that we have a vision to cause a great change in a very active and viable business industry and we are committed to it. So, we stick it out and keep celebrating our successes and learning from our failures.

If you are into ecommerce business in Nigeria today, I say, may the odds favour you. Cheers to more successes ahead!
For your more personalized comments, suggestions, opinions, advise or even possible discussions on a business partnership *winks*, please feel free to contact me at darepius@cribpark.com. Also, kindly visit our online marketplace www.cribpark.com, follow us on twitter on @cribparker and Facebook on facebook.com/cribparker. We also have a community on Facebook called Housing and Homes Community – Nigeria.
Looking forward to connecting better with you.

“Keep showing up every day and trying to get better. Don’t count yourself out." – Ellen Chisa

Every moment is a lesson for us as entrepreneurs, and in the tech start-up world where things move so fast, it would be a sad thing to be left behind. My team and I had quite a tough time taking off on the ecommerce runway, especially being an online marketplace for building materials. So far so good, but we are still aiming for the best. Here are some of the lessons I have learnt from running an ecommerce store.


PICK YOUR NICHE
Each time I mentioned to people that Cribpark is an ecommerce platform, they’d give the look of
“Again?, another ecommerce platform?”
But when I added that we are an ecommerce marketplace for building materials, then they are like
“Oh, that’s cool. A new twist to ecommerce”.
With Jumia and Konga having raised about hundreds of millions of dollars between them, you are better of picking a niche or you will just be a poor man’s Konga.com. When you pick a niche, pick one you understand quite well and be the best at it. Even Amazon started as an online bookstore.

When we started as an ecommerce for building materials we realised most of our early clients were people who were building for the first time. They knew little about construction and didn’t want to be held captive by their contractor’s advice. Since our team is dominated by civil engineers, it was easy for us to give them information about the materials they were buying that their suppliers and contractors did not know. They were not just paying for the product, they were also getting free valuable information. Picking a niche helps you to focus your best effort, and you really don’t want to be spread too thin.

Remember those days when shopping started and ended in Yaba market; if you were just shopping for jeans, you were more likely to buy from someone who only sold jeans in his/her shop, than the one who sold all types of clothes including jeans.


CREATE A BRAND
Your brand is your promise to your customer, it is what they expect from your company when they think about you. It may sound too early talking branding, but you will reap the benefits early too. You want to understand what your brand is? Well, ask your customers to leave an anonymous feedback. Last year I had a meeting with one of our B2B customers Engr Ken. He was referred to us by a B2B customer and had done a transaction of over 1 million naira. Towards the end of the year he had been so impressed with our performance and asked us to have a meeting. We discussed for about an hour and you’d think it was a friend reunion even though it was our first time seeing each other. We discussed the building industry, attitude of suppliers and laughed about our first delivery.

What happened in our first delivery? The supplier supplied an inferior quality of sharp sand but Engr. Ken wasn’t on site during delivery. Normally, we only pay suppliers when customers indicate satisfaction, but since he okayed the delivery, we paid the supplier. On getting to site to see the quality of sand he was less than impressed. He called us to state his displeasure and how the supply would implicate him as a contractor. We were concerned and ordered the supplier back to the site. The supplier agreed that the quality didn’t meet the requirements he promised. The sand would have to be used for another site purpose than they intended. Instantly we paid Engr Ken 50% back for what he paid for. We would later deduct the money from the supplier from other deliveries he made. The money couldn’t change the situation, but at least it showed we cared more about his project than our profit. That was also the last time we had such issues as we had to tighten our loose ends.

During the meeting, Engr Ken talked about how he was impressed with how we handled the situation and always ensured the suppliers did the right thing. Through his words and other clients’, we could see they saw us as a reliable company that puts customer first ahead of every sale.
Customers are not dumb, they know when you put them first, and they return because you gave them an experience and not a product. Such mistakes may happen once in a blue moon, but it is in such cases brand promises are verified. Show what your brand is, don’t tell. Yes we lost about 20,000 naira, but it is nothing compared with what we gained from him in over 8 repeat sales.


GO THE EXTRA MILE
Call Cribpark at anytime and we are ready. We have received calls by 6am, 10pm, 11pm and once by 1am. When they apologised for calling us late, we were quick to let them know it was no problem for us at all. I remember a weekend I had the customer care number with me, it was a few minutes past 1 am on a Sunday morning and I received a call. I checked the time, picked the call, and didn’t act like it was unusual. The customer was on our site checking all the items he wanted to buy and I had the pleasure of running him through our value offering. It happened that he was looking for a single place he could buy all his sanitary wares and other furniture fittings for his new house. We talked for almost half an hour and sealed a deal worth millions through it.

As a start-up, there is no point forming office hours except you have another guarantee of salary at the end of the month. Our office hours is anytime a customer is able to reach us, through calls, emails, or even in our dreams, as long as we can be reached, we are open. The extra mile is a huge differentiating factor for start-ups to break out and it could come in different ways.

We had a client who was running out of sand on the day he was constructing his German floor. He called us by 12noon and said he needed it by 2pm. We once did same day delivery for him, but even this was a challenge. We called the supplier closest to him and were able to convince him to make the delivery out of his existing busy schedule. We called our client back to say we wouldn’t make the 2pm delivery but 3pm was possible. He was excited we could even promise to deliver as you don’t normally find it easy getting such items during the day except you ordered a day before. We delivered by 2.55pm and till today he remains one of our best customers. Word going round says we are his most reliable supplier too. Repeat purchases from him are over 17 across 9 months.


DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU
If you don’t know the way, follow those who have been there, over time you will discover the path to follow. When we fully launched in June last year, we developed quite a robust infrastructure for people to visit the website, browse easily and make an order. One of our mentors was a UI/UX lead in Oracle who gave us unique insights; our interface was awesome.
To our surprise we realised that most users would visit the platform, browse through the products and rather than click “add to cart” would prefer to call our customer care. After the first transaction, most repeat orders from these customers would continue on Whatsapp. Infact most users asked if they could chat with us on Whatsapp. They completely bypassed our designed order process. Chat might just be key in the future of ecommerce customer relations because people want a more personal experience. Overtime, when we realised people liked to have the phone numbers more than “adding to cart” we simply made our phone numbers more visible on the site and same thing applied to our marketing efforts.


MARKETING
We started using Facebook and twitter and SEOs. Great tools. Facebook helped us reach a lot of people and had a decent conversion while twitter got more engagements but with little or no conversion. Overtime we were running out of money and we had to look for other ways of gaining new audiences without costs. We tried nairaland as the posts were free anyway, we secured a partnership with a major classified Ads site, and also did some on-ground marketing. It worked! We had new customers and more sales. Sometimes not having what you want makes you more creative. Now we explore more of content marketing as we have realised that it creates a bond with the target customer and also helps break down trust barriers. If you are running on a low budget and are quite creative, you should try a mix of different platforms and strategies. The world is not a plain surface; don’t stick to the status quo, for it is your duty to create your audience.


BE THE MARKETPLACE PLEASE!
It was February last year when we had just decided to pivot into building materials and be a marketplace. The following week Cristina Stenbeck the chairwoman of Kinnevik was in Rwanda. Kinnevik owned Millicom which owned our incubator in Rwanda then, so Ms. Stenbeck decided to pop-in and have a discussion with the innovators. It was an opportunity to learn from someone who had invested over 2 billion dollars in ecommerce. We told her about our initial foray into home furniture and services and our decision to focus on being a hyper-local marketplace for building materials. She was impressed to hear we would be a marketplace and explained from her experience that the ecommerce marketplaces was easier for start-ups than the traditional ecommerce model as there was very little or no inventory and logistics to worry about. For someone with huge experience in ecommerce, validating the marketplace and business model meant a lot to us and in reality it turned out the right path to tread.


FOCUS ON THE RIGHT METRIC
There are many metrics that matter to a start-up, but focus on the most important. For me, I believe beyond the GMVs, LTVs, and CACs, the customer success is the most important. Why? Because we might be in business to make money, but since we are not robbing people, we have to make money by making customers happy. It makes no sense to acquire 100 customers in January and 99 don’t bother to buy from you again.

How many customers have you had?; How many have come back to buy? ; and How many of those who came back have referred you to other customers? Customer retention is very important and to achieve it don’t just focus on selling but give your customers an experience they can’t get on other platforms. Give them a reason to come back. Don’t let your customers feel they clicked the wrong link again. Most times people only come back when they have been well served or you are solving more of their problems.


RUN LEAN
In our first 6 months of ecommerce operations, we focused on furniture, interior decor and home services. We made just $1,000 in revenue and then we got seed investment of $15,000 from our incubator. We pivoted to building materials and now that we are in our 9th month as ecommerce marketplace for building materials, we have had sales transactions of about $150,000, and spent just about $5,000 running the business. We are currently a team of 3 working full-time and we have spent less than $500 on marketing. Having team members with diverse competencies has been a huge benefit as it lowered our cost of personnel.

Running lean is important because funding may not come as expected, market demand may fluctuate and some assumptions might be painfully unreal, but the reality is that if you run lean you will have a low burn rate and a high run way. This gives you enough time to test your model, make several iterations and be prepared for scaling up. Running lean simply means looking out for the most, in a less costly but highly effective way to run your business so that you don’t quickly run out of money. There are a limited number of times you can lean on friends and family for financial support, so if you don’t run lean and grow the right numbers, you may have a good product but you would have had to close down long before striking gold is in view.
Warning: By the time you are done running lean, you may end up looking like a fashion model, but at least you have a sound business model.


FAIL FAST, SCALE
I didn’t quite understand what failing fast meant though I was using to the word. It is this simple: As entrepreneurs we think we know our industry quite well and understand the pain points, so we design a solution. Overtime we realise that in most cases though the need is there, but customers are just not buying into us. Then we sit down to understand the customer better and design a process that follows the customer’s footprint. This often means trying different things most of which will fail, but you only have to get it right a few times. Since you are going to fail in most features anyway, why not fail fast so you quickly know what doesn’t work and then focus on what works. At the beginning it is also important to do what works even if it doesn’t scale, as that may quickly differentiate you from others and make you unique. Those little things like extra attention you give the customer may not all be doable when you scale, but at least you will get the numbers that makes scaling the next logical step.


FINAL WORDS
Am I sharing these business experiences and tips like someone who has finally arrived? Capital NO!. In this part of the world, we tend to think that writing a book, giving tips and talking at seminars to eager audiences is only a duty for those who have ‘made it big’ and have gotten it all perfected. Well, I do not belong to that school of thought. There is need for shared peer experiences.
My experiences till date as CEO and co-founder of this unique e-commerce business niche have been filled with an almost balanced share of ups and downs. The simple truth is that success has no silver bullet. What has worked for me and my team is the fact that we have a vision to cause a great change in a very active and viable business industry and we are committed to it. So, we stick it out and keep celebrating our successes and learning from our failures.

If you are into ecommerce business in Nigeria today, I say, may the odds favour you. Cheers to more successes ahead!
For your more personalized comments, suggestions, opinions, advise or even possible discussions on a business partnership *winks*, please feel free to contact me at darepius@cribpark.com. Also, kindly visit our online marketplace www.cribpark.com, follow us on twitter on @cribparker and Facebook on facebook.com/cribparker. We also have a community on Facebook called Housing and Homes Community – Nigeria.
Looking forward to connecting better with you.

As OP, I would like to appreciate all the experiences shared on this tread. Also the the like, shares and other comments on comments. Many lessons to pick from all these but we all know that action is the bridge between dreams and realities. May God bless our efforts towards achieving our dreams. Cheers!

FOR YOUR VERY AFFORDABLE AND QUALITY BUILDING MATERIALS SUCH AS GRANITE, CEMENT, SAND, WOOD, DOORS, ROOFING ITEMS AND EVEN INTERIOR FURNISHING ITEMS (DELIVERED ON TIME AND NO EXTRA DELIVERY COSTS), PLEASE CONTACT CRIBPARK (WWW.CRIBPARK.COM) BY CALLING DARE ON 08068839618 OR JIDE ON 07056556189. YOU WILL BE GLAD YOU DID. THANKS.

Not surprisingly, it is owned Mukesh Ambani, Ambani, the fifth richest man in the world and India’s richest man with an estimated net worth of $18.9 billion. The Antilia is home to Mukesh Ambani, his wife and three children, and it is their sole residence. The family's living quarters are on the top floors because they wanted the sunlight. Despite the huge staff, the kids still maintain their own rooms.

The Antilia is named after a mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean. It has extra-high ceilings and some ceilings are double height, so other buildings of equivalent height may have as many as 40-60 floors. The Antilia was designed by Chicago-based architects Perkins and Will, and Australian-based construction company Leighton Holdings handled the construction. It is deemed to be the world's second most expensive residential property, after Buckingham Palace, which is designated as a governmental property.

This 27-story, 400,000-square-foot building has six underground parking floors, three helicopter pads, in case you prefer to arrive by air, and contains a multi-story garage with space for 168 cars. The home was also designed to survive an 8-Richter scale earthquake. The lobby alone has nine elevators; and there is a spa, terraced gardens and a temple where the family prays regularly. It also has a ballroom, guest suites and theatre that seat 50.

The world's most expensive private residential property is called Antilia. It sits on Mumbai's Altamount Road and cost an estimated $1 billion to build. It is presently valued at over a billion dollars. The Antilia is located at Altamount Road, one of the most expensive addresses in the world.

Much has been said by many people (especially in big Nigerian cities like Lagos) about ''one not yet having a permanent address if one does not have a house of their own". We all know the economic realities and challenges involved in actually becoming a house owner in Nigeria today, no matter what city you live in. Regardless of what work or means of livelihood one is into ; be it entrepreneurial or salary earning, legal or illegal, active or passive income business, truth is that coughing out at least a few millions of Naira (at a go or over a period of time) to have one's own roof over your family's head will no doubt leave a dent in one's capital base.

In a very recent piece here in the property section of Nairaland, someone asked "What Age Should Owning A House Be A Priority?". As typical of such opinion based Nairaland posts, various brilliant and not-so-brilliant responses were given to that. However, this writer personally feels that issues like this ''What age should one become a landlord?" or "What ideal age should one get married? and the many likes, are part of the reasons why we have so much young people under unnecessary pressure and as a result multitudes of desperate and greedy people who are gunning to succeed by all mean in order to prove a point to some people who do not even know they exist in the first place. (Please note that this stated opinion is just a personal one).

The question of this property-ownership-related question I would rather that we ask is this :

- Which life experience/incident (serious or hilarious, simple or complex) made the landlords (or soon-to-be landlords) in-house decide that they have had enough of life as a tenant?

- How did you go about the plan that made you achieve this dream?

- What are the challenges you faced along the line?

- Is it so hard ,as we really make it sound in Nigeria, to own a house?

- What are some unpopular tips or resources available that people can adopt to make their own home ownership dreams possible and sooner?

- Is there really any big deal in the much acclaimed title 'Landlord'?

I hope that the responses we get to this will do better to inspire several Nairalanders (like this writer) who are still tenants to do more and better in order to achieve this dream. Over to you our dear Excellency 'Landlords' and 'Landladies'. . Your responses to this will be much valued.

We will release the designs in May 2016, you can send an email to designs@cribpark.com so we can notify you when they are ready

blitzman:
Following... can we see the simple designs you have.

We will release all the designs in early May. It would include the 3D for both the external, internal and other documents. Thanks for following

mufutau55:
Following wella, wella o. But I will like to see sample building 3D designs too, not just internal. Thx.

Hajji M.

DESIGN PRO
Maybe you like one of the designs so much but you want a little customisation. Probably you want slightly bigger rooms. It is possible, welcome to the Design PRO. Design PRO is meant for people who want simple changes to existing models we have provided. You are allowed to make 2 revisions after which you may have to pay for each additional revision.

Price:
Bungalows: N109, 000 Storeys*: N129, 000


Features
Maximum of 2 revisions allowed
Design Pro has all the features and benefit of Design Plus.


This design packages and would be launched in May, if interested in any of our mentioned design packages, kindly send a mail to designs@cribpark.com or register on Cribpark.com. (http://www.cribpark.com.ng/index.php/customer/account/create/) and select “VIP member” as customer group.

*Storeys only apply to building designs of maximum of one storey

DESIGN PLUS

Price:
Bungalows: N89,000 Storeys: N109,000


Features
Architectural designs set
Structural designs set
Mechanical &Electrical Design
Bill Of Estimates
3D Visualisation (exterior)
3D interior design
Video Animation (walkthrough)
Construction Plan


Benefits
Over 36 different designs to choose from
Design package includes all required building designs
Building designs meet local authorities requirements
Free online consultation during foundation and setting out
Ready to go – you can start construction immediately
All professionals involved in design have vast experience and are registered

DESIGN LITE

Price:
Bungalows: N69,000 Storeys*: N89,000


Features
Architectural Design
Structural Design
M&E Design
Bill Of Estimates
3D Visualisation (exterior)


Benefits
Over 24 different designs to choose from
Design package includes all required building designs
Building designs meet local authorities requirements
Ready to go – you can start construction immediately
All professionals involved in design have vast experience and are registered

For every new building project, be it residential or office, the design stage comes first. At this point, critical decisions and compromises that will ultimately form and shape the proposed building are reached. First we pay an Architect to design our dream house and then later pay the structural engineer (whose work we know little or no clue about) as well as the M&E (Mechanical & Electrical) Service engineers for their own designs. Later on, we secure the services of a Quantity Surveyor (Q.S) or give the drawing to a contractor to give us the cost of the building.

When we receive the bill for these designs of the building, we may be taken aback by the somewhat unexpected high cost (especially first time builders) and we soon start looking for ways to reduce the size of the proposed building and also remove some features whose luxury we can no longer afford – e.g. swimming pools, exotic external finishes, e.t.c. These changes subsequently results in extra charged by the Architect, Structural Engineer and M&E while the Q.S or contractor needs to start the bills of quantities all over again. At this point in the project planning phase, it is even possible that cognizance has not yet been taken of other extra design and documentations that have to be done and approved by local authorities before construction proper can commence. In some cases possibly, we may be at this phase for 2-3 months, depending on the speed of the professionals involved, and a sum of at least N250, 000 (in case of residential projects) already sunken. Eventually, more time and money than estimated ab initio have already been expended.

We at Cribpark can very much relate with this situation perennially encountered by people building their homes and this has inspired us to come up with a first-of-its –kind unique solution. What we have done is to create an array of over 30 different architectural designs, from which you could just make a selection, whether your project is a bungalow or storey building. Any architectural design you select has its own required set of drawings which includes structural design, bill of estimate, mechanical and electrical, 3D renderings and video animation and all other required building documents. Should you wish to start building your residence or office structure soon, we already have a ready-made design options available for you. Check them out below:

Cribpark.com The future of affordable housing starts with affordable designs

So true as regards the artisans. As for the DIY, there are actually some DIY tasks like painting that we could easily do.

Chukazu:
the number 14. is so on point.
good artisans are gradually becoming extinct in Nigeria.


another point is that you start considering doing some DIY, when the cost keeps ballooning

lol

hungryboy:
To add to that, another issue been say,
If you dey too form Don Jazzy and Posh,
You no dey come look wetin dey happen for your Site,
Engineer go just dey bring figure you dey tear cheque give am,

Your name na sorry,
Engineer go chop you sotey,
him use money were him make building your 4 bedroom flat, build him own 3 bedroom flat

yes you will

kindworld:
Lol, just believe you will achieve it.
I know I'll build my own no matter the pain, and this FTC is an evidence!

21. Housing Is Hot Cake
You have just completed the roofing and estate agents are already around you lobbying to bring in their own people to rent the house. You are there telling the agent that you are gathering the money to finish your house and you will call them when it is done, only for the tenant to tell you they are willing to complete the project with their funds and you can deduct the money from their house rent. Now you know why landlords hardly bargain – there is more demand than supply.

22. (Bonus Point) - You Become the Landlord You Detested
Remember how your last landlord was always a pain in the neck. We both know you are not Ballotelli, but whenever you complain to him that another tap is broken he asks “Why always you?”. By October he is already sending you reminder for the house rent which is due in December, and he has a dedicated parking space that leaves other tenants with no option but to park outside. He is the mini-devil and the black sheep of his house.
So you finally finished building the house and bagged the coveted honorary title of LFN (Landlord in the Federal Republic of Nigeria). Your new tenant who just came back from US told you his tap ran dry and you asked “which movie is that?”. He insists it is your responsibility to replace it as it is done in the US, and reminds you Fashola said tenants should only pay for one year. Well your answer is simple, “go and live in Fashola’s house”. When you know how much it costs to build a house and how insignificant yearly rents are in comparison to the total cost except in high brow areas, you might soon be the next black sheep.


****Feel free to add yours and drop a question too.
You can also join our facebook group https://www./cribparkcommunity/ where you can post your specific questions and we will give you a prompt response. You can also join our whatsapp group where home builders can ask any question relating to your home construction issues and our in-house professionals would reply them on the best practices.

19. People Start Asking Questions
You used to change your car every 2 years, you always paid your house rent 2 months before it expired, you paid school fees per session not even per term, you wore Sandino Cementino long sleeves (don’t worry, we made the designer up) and even the lady who normally supplies you shirts knew you always picked at least 2, you always took your family out on Saturdays - you were the example other families followed, now all of a sudden things have changed. Infact if you had not been going to work everyday, they would have assumed you have been sacked. Some eventually get to ask you, and you had to let them know your castle is moving from the air to its permanent site.

20. Dollar And Construction Are Like Bread And Butter
Dollar is rising and you are laughing because you don’t do online transactions, wait till you hear about the latest price of reinforcement, cement, sanitary wares, tiles, and fittings. When the price of dollar goes up, know ye that things are about to change. Don’t be shocked when you see a future landlord gathering used cement sacks and wood planks to sell to the ‘Abokis’ and mama buka who come to site to buy them. Anyone who has built a house in this Naija of today knows that every kobo matters oh!

17. You May Even Suddenly Start Thinking of Painting as ‘Luxury’
.....And then your children ask you one day “Mummy/Daddy, what will be the colour of our new house?’’. You realize you had been so engrossed in other major expenses that you didn’t give much thought to the painting. Looking at how much you have left in your bank account and some already accumulated debts you start asking yourself if painting is really needed. “Maybe painting is a luxury after all”. We know where the thought is coming from, be encouraged, the struggle is almost over, the painting will be worth it and you will be glad you coloured your dream.

18. Now You Are Sure Of A Permanent Address
If you don’t own your own house, you don’t have a permanent address. There was a time when you till had to use your father’s house address in Ketu even though you now live in Festac because you don’t know where you will be living in the next 2 years and you don’t want your letters to keep going to your old address. Now you are proud to write your new address and have it for keeps, no longer will your delivery from Konga end in your old address because you had forgotten to change the address on your Konga account.

15. There Is Always A Wuruwuru To The Answer
It is easier for you to dream at the beginning, as your project runs to a close it makes more sense for you to move in and complete it while there than to keep paying house rents which would further set your finances back. Your house may not be painted, some rooms don’t even have doors, you have not tiled the floor, but it doesn’t make you less of a landlord. Monkey no fine, but him mama like am. Not even Buckingham palace looks better than your house presently.

16. You Now Appreciate the ‘Economics’ Behind the Thatched Roof Your Ancestors Used
“What One point five gini? For roofing of this small building? Will the roof cover the sins of me and my family?. How much did they build my grandfather’s house in my hometown?” That was the story of an apparently emotionally, and of course, financially-exhausted and frustrated chap who was building his first house. He had just gotten to the roofing stage when he received quotations from his builder that the roofing will cost close to N1.5 Million. After the roofing, finishes is another issue. It probably took you 8 months to raise the building and word is already spreading out that you work in the oil company. People are surprised to pass by your house in the next 1 year and from outside it seems nothing is going on, but you know you have spent so much more.

13. See No Evil, Say No Evil
Bricklayer lays block and makes a mistake by leaving a hole as big as half a block in the kitchen’s wall, the plasterer plasters everywhere there is block, and leaves the hole “as is”, painter paints only the plastered wall and you come back after a week seeing the entire kitchen from the gate through the hole. You wonder why in this era of Ben Bruce’s common sense revolution, 3 people would be competing for the "most silly person" award . Workers are only after the money, and rarely correct the mistakes of others if it would mean extra work.

14. Ghana Is Going Nowhere
Chances are that good plastering work you saw in Lekki and that well laid tile in your friend’s house in Ajah were done by a Ghanaian. If not a Ghanaian, then it is probably a Togolese or a Benonoise. It is a joke in construction that if you see tiles that are well laid and properly grouted then they were laid by Ghanaians, if it is a shoddy work then it is a Nigerian. It is a generalisation, but youths no longer fancy such technical skills and those who find themselves in it are rarely that detailed. We are fast loosing core technical skills in the construction industry and this has opened the doors for our ECOWAS brothers who admittedly do a better job

11. You Soon Start Talking Like A Construction Pro
Now you know that a German floor is not made in Germany, Concrete biscuits are not made of flour and 1-2-4 or 1-3-6 is not a football formation but a mix ratio for cement, sand and granite. It feels good to understand and speak the engineering lingo, as it makes you negotiate better with construction pros or sellers. Over 90% of residential construction in Nigeria are self managed, and chances are you are directly involved in your project. Being involved may lead to more cost savings and better quality of work. Most of that experience may be lost though if you are not building another house soon.

12. Losses Are Guaranteed
There is always that Mr. nobody who takes everything from the site. One day it is the wheel barrow, the next day it is 100 bags of cement that walked away, then to make it worse the wood planks which you used for foundation formwork and had been planning to reuse for decking gets missing-in-action. You still can’t explain how the painter finished the 6 buckets of paint, or how two cartons of tiles went on French leave. Only the gods can tell you what happened and in most cases you just have to move on. Losses are bound to happen.

Hello all,
Here is the part 2 of "21 Things You Experience When You Build Your House In Nigeria - Part 2". Have a good read

We posted part 1 on friday, if you havent read it follow this link https://www.nairaland.com/3037321/21-things-experience-when-build

Building in Nigeria is complicated, but it is easy when you know how to handle the issues involved.

www.cribpark.com

You can join our facebook group https://www./cribparkcommunity/ where you can post your specific questions and we will give you a prompt response.

You can also join our whatsapp group where home builders can ask any question relating to your home construction issues and our in-house professionals would reply them on the best practices. Send your number to 08068839618 if you are interested. It is free

funmind:
How can a woman handle this?

Thanks 3strikes

3strikes:
Keep up the good work Cribpark.