It must be a useful product that can be used daily.

Cast your mind back to your last visit to any hotel whether its a 5 star like the Waldorf or Le'Meridien Brands.

The less exclusive ones or the downright seedy ones in the worst slums you can imagine, they have one common streak. When you are being checked in, you must be given some basics like towels, toilet tissue and soap at the very least. Each time a guest uses a room at least tissue and those small soaps must be replaced.

So imagine that you are a major distributor for the preferred soap or tissue brand and you supply to the hospitality business in Lagos alone and the profit you are making is just 5.00 on each soap, your only responsibility at that point is to ensure that one way or the other the hotel business is at its peak in terms of business.

The more guests that check in the more tissue and soap you will sell.

Soaps everywhere in the world are a daily product. I cannot even imagine any hotel no matter how seedy giving you an already used soap or tissue. The very low budget hotels may give you inferior quality soap and tissue but they will almost always be fresh/unused.

Can we all review the Characteristics and attributes of the product while making suggestions please?

CHARACTERISTICS OF OUR PREFERRED F.M.C.G PRODUCT

It must be a useful product that can be used daily.

The product must be well packaged both at primary and secondary level.

A product that cannot be used twice.

A product that cannot be shared by two people.

The product must not have a protracted shelf life.

It must not exceed 100.00 per unit.

The product that can be enjoyed by both children and Adults.

The product must be from a company based in Lagos or Ogun State.

The product should be reasonably new in the market.

It must also be from the stable of reasonably consistent company

So far we have only one suggestion; garri from Newway2.

More suggestions are needed please.

Just before listing the Characteristics/Attributes of the preferred FMCG product we are adopting for the first stage of this product, I would like to tell you my thoughts.

In the delineation of the territories that will constitute the initial sales platforms I limited us to areas that have a large population that spreads across almost all the socio-economic strata of the society.

This is because we wish to reach as many people as possible and for the simple reason that whatever we choose must be something that begins to yield results almost immediately thus staving off demoralization from the very beginning.

Contributions are welcome.

rose75:


Hi Ego personified,
Thanks for this enlightenment.

Do you mind being a little open about the product you distribute? Just as an insight, we may not necessarily replicate it.

Though, if the sky can accommodate all the birds, it therefore means that we can also sail smoothly without interferences. . Boundaries will be respected.

Yes I support Rose here. If you are uncomfortable about disclosing what it is you distribute at least give us a hint. Whatever it is has made you stand tall and tower above peers in experience.

Kudos girl.

egopersonified:
There is this erroneous belief that there is little or no money to be made in FMCG, the solution is selling more quantities to meet a profit target. I am currently distributing one product and sometimes I think I am involved in blood money, more sales equals more money. Being a distributor puts you at an advantage over shop owners, they wait for customers to come, you go to the customers. So you have the ability to determine how many you want to sell.

You are too much.

Please keep it up.

I am even wondering whether you should take over the thread completely.

Newway2:
Hmmmm,
Welcome To Bizness School Practical Class.
Lecturer: Karin001

First of all, I duff my hat for d OP for ds wonderful bizness school cum training expose. From what I hv read & seen so far, she's world class.
2ndly, I was drawn here by another woman of equally great & latent potentials who's still slumbering at d moment. Lol!.

Nice work so far.

As per ds FMCG in question, my take are:
1) What age demography is d OP looking at? Shld d FMCG appeal to all age bracket?
2) Is d OP looking at FMCG used daily? Weekly? Or even many times daily?
3) is d OP looking at very simple & sometimes stupid FMCG item?
4) Is d OP looking at family or individual target?

As per (3 & 4) above, I hv a simple suggestion: GARRI

My Reasons
Nearly every home in southern Nigeria takes garri & It cuts across all income brackets.

Following @Rose75's contributions on d "Sand free, oven baked smoke catfish's" example, we must dissect or find out what makes ds particular smoked fish appeal to many pple who wouldn't hv bordered abt it abinitio.
Theses are d Packing & telling them (d truth) abt one of d put-offs or bad attributes (of smoked fish) for many pple, which is "sand".

D big question is: Can common garri be re-packed to re-appeal to many homes & individuals?

To this, I say YES & YES & YES...

Can u sell desert sand to an Arab? Yes & no.
Yes, if d packaging is right & no, if it's wrongly packaged.

In this thread, " the deep calleth the deep".

Am following cos an just a learner.....

Cc: @Egopersonified

Thanks Oga!

This is the pattern this thread must retain. Please stay on the thread and continue with such intrinsic contributions.

Garri has quite an appeal. It can also sell if the issue of packaging is addressed. Mallams have been selling Ijebu garri for as long as I can possibly remember. In the UK and other foreign countries where you have well patronized African shops garri has been packaged and sold for some time now.

Here in Nigeria, if you visit some malls, you will see some companies displaying well packaged garri for sale.

Groundnuts have also been packed indiscriminately and sold in various shapes and sizes.

You may wish to recall that before pure water was introduced in mechanically packaged form, we already had water tied in cellophane and sold in schools and other public places. Also, before cowbell took the market by storm, milk was already packaged in cellophane or even measured in containers and sold.

All the same thanks Oga Newway 2 for this contribution.

We will together review its suitability for this project subsequently.

jchick:
Madam Karin,

What can I say? I'm completely blown away by your business acumen and passion to not just grow but carry other people along also.

In all my contemplated businesses, FMCG have been the last on my mind considering it's low profit margins. You however, are a proof that all it takes is a little more determination.

Bless your soul sister for being a blessing. I'm looking forward to also being an active pioneering part of this outstanding project. Following closely ma'am.

You are so frank.

Indeed it is very true that many people are scared of FMCG because the margins are very small.

But guess what, I have been in FCMG for a while and I know that while the margins are really small, it is a very worthwhile investment.

Food for thought; All the carbonated drinks and beef rolls sold under different brand names in Lagos alone provides a livelihood for the retailers.

However for the distributors of these products they have made stupendous wealth from these products over the years.

Honestly, just consider that you are a distributor for gala for just a 3 years consistently and all you make is 100 per carton and you sell only 20 cartons per day(very conservative estimate) for 300 days.

Please do the math.

egopersonified, can you please make an input here?

Rhukie:
@karin001, please, can I send you a PM?

Yes you may.

Nnannapat:
I am passionately moved after stumbling on this thread by luck. I can hardly believe that OP is a woman ( no pun intended), I can only conclude that Nigeria got talents. We are first world material and will get there by God's grace and our various but coordinated individual hardwork, that , I know this thread will contribute it's quota.

I have booked my popcorn and seat in advance ( to avoid the rush). Waiting patiently for our able mentor/Lecturer.

Thanks for the compliment.

Pun intended or not, it doesn't matter.

I have been referred to as a man many times in my life.

What is of more importance to me is how useful this information will be irrespective of the gender it comes through.

Droyal:


Madam Karin, following bumper to bumper.

I noticed you didn't include some densely populated areas too, Iba, Iyanaiba, okokomaiko even down to agbara(its technically in Lagos its just in Ogun on the map), Festac, mile 2, orile, ajegunle etc.

Following...

Thanks. it is by design.

All densely populated areas will be added as we proceed.

We can only commence the project without hiccups with just a few areas.

Babacele:
I was caught up the first time i came across your e-person through your earlier business essays under the FMCG distribution experiences you started sharing here few months ago. Yesterday, when you talked about self help books and their principles being universal in response to an admirer's observation while in the same breath seeing roses in the thorns of our present karmic reality tagged recession, i was hooked. I know a reader when i see one for this writer is a voracious specie whose taste is insatiable.
Now this very essay is the tripod and the concluding most important part in my falling in love with your essence. I think you can change ugliness to beauty, a base metal to gold; a human alchemist like the few persons i hold in high esteem here on nairaland. Pardon me mademoiselle,of course i know you are betrothed; but this is my confession.

Thanks so much sir.

Babacele, you must however remain on the thread. we really need people like you here to broaden our scope.

I will have to get back to you later today as regards the product characteristics. I haven't finished drawing them up yet but we will have it ready by tonight.

Do bear with me.

After a careful evaluation of her situation, we both decided that she would commence a business with the 17,000 she had saved from her one year NYSC year.

So, off she went to Yaba. Based on my advice she started by selecting used baby wears and had them washed and sold.

Incidentally her first customers were her neighbours with kids while her second set of customers were mothers drawn from the pediatric and maternity ward of LUTH.

In less than two years she was a force to reckon with as she had her own shop and was shipping bales all around Nigeria.

And she was enjoying it so much. Such fulfillment.

Find a job you love..............life.

That is what the Bale sales thread reminded me of. Even as I was going through it, so many possibilities that could be corollaries of that same business presented itself.

Our education needs to be reappraised seriously in this country. Our current curriculum is archaic and seriously out of sync with present day realities. It was designed by the colonialist to produce an unthinking apparatus to service the growing public service.
The contemporary society demands a more self reliance focused curriculum. rather than education for employment as it is currently, we need a paradigm shift to something practical and useful for this present day setting.

Things have gone so wrong.

Education that is supposed to bring advancement is now the one destroying the very fabric of our psyche.

Why on earth was she searching for over two years?

At this rate she would keep getting negative responses and in getting more frustrated her negativity would increase while her self-worth would decrease.

Finally, she would implode.

I was prompted to asked her if she had ever applied to work as a sales person in either a boutique or a wholesale fabric shop? Her response was negative. Asked further if she considered a vocation in the fashion industry, she responded that she silently nursed that ambition but that her family was against that and would prefer that she had a white collar job first and retire into the fashion business after proving to society that she was not an Olodo who went to school and could not hold a job down for a while.

Then began series of discussions between me and her. Each time we discussed possibilities, you could see sparks in her eyes, for me this was a good sign, all hope was not lost.
So we sat down together and did a proper analysis. We needed to first of all uncover her. Who was this girl? Why was she thinking this way? How had she been programmed over the years? Each human being is a rare gem. Unfortunately, even the individual does not at times know his/her value and thus plods along every day. That is the bane of our educational archetype. In this case she had concluded

The effort to re-program her commenced. A lot of cobwebs were in her gaze and without removing it her focus would remain impaired.
We found out that her understanding of starting a business was that she first had to work for many years, save a lot of money before opening a shop and then stocking it and then selling.

Capital (as in cash) was the basis for setting up a thriving business.

Last night, I was browsing through the first three pages of the business section of Nairaland and something hit me really hard.

I have for some reason been observing that there was a prominent thread on Used clothes sales(Bale sales) where the Op is a woman too. I noticed yesterday that there was a new one by a man and it was equally growing and I quickly read through the entire thread and then visited the old and prominent thread and went through it too.

The feeling was electric and it then took be back in time. We really have no reason to complain in this country, honestly.
Whatever we want is usually available for us easily if we but just look around us enough. The country is bristling with opportunities. Sadly, it is only a certain type of foreigner that are appropriating these opportunities something with very little or no leverage. Very sad.

In 2009, I visited a friend of mine who was then and is still residing at the LUTH staff quarters in Idi Araba, Lagos. She had this young lady of hers living with her who was supposed to be her Husband’s niece. The girl had finished NYSC and was in Lagos looking for a job and hoping for the best. So far luck had not come her way and she was losing momentum by the day. There was also this palpable tension in the house, two grown women always at home. recipe for anarchy.

This was transforming her into a psychological wreck lacking in self-confidence. In discussing with her for just a few minutes one could tell that before a very fiery interview panel she would crumble like a pack of cards. It was that bad.To crown it all she bagged a 3rd class in Sociology; the classical nail in the coffin.

However, there was something else about this lady which everybody who had taste acquiesced to; She had impeccable taste. She may not have been earning money then but you could tell that she had taste and was very intelligent. She loved clothes and could analyse them animatedly.
Added to the fact that she was also very warm and little things set her on fire.

Her enthusiasm was infectious.

It hit me and hard too!

Sociology was just a certificate with this one.

This was a born trader just lacking in guidance and direction.

Meanwhile, a recognition hit me last night and I became very excited.

I will share this recognition with you in my next post tonight and you will further see why if we are all alert and open a clean way of creating wealth will always lead to the goal.

This experience I only recalled after reading through a particular thread right here on Nairaland.

The perspective is so simple and yet so practical and the yield is unparalleled.

Keep a date with my next post.

Tonight !!!!!!

Our next activity on this platform will be to appraise Fast Moving Consumer Goods that we consider really fast and attractive to sell in the specified areas.

We will then identify a particular fast moving product that we will recommend to be sold by the team.

The characteristics of the product will be provided in due course.

For now I would like to welcome suggestions as regarding what we could sell effectively in the areas above that will have an effective demand. I will say that we should feel free in recommending anything that we think of whether it is apparently silly, funny, fantastic or outright hilarious.

Just post it and add your reasons for standing by it.

By tomorrow hopefully, I will list out what I consider the attributes that newbies in sales can effectively sell without despairing.

It is imperative to state here that while we will welcome suggestions from far and wide, we will only adopt a product that reflects the majority of the attributes we have identified. At this stage I would also like to invite Nairalanders who are producers/manufacturers of things they consider our team will sell to come and market us.

But they must recognize from the very beginning that we are not obligated in any way to choose their product.

Quite honestly, nothing is clear at the moment. What ever we choose will just be a tool that will be used temporarily to boos the confidence our participants and other posters and to prove that sales and marketing is not a s difficult a it is made to appear.

bharkarh:
Just getting to see this thread now and I must say I'm impressed. Thanks @karin001 for trying your best from taking people off shackles of poverty.

I will be through with my service year (NYSC) in 3weeks time and will like to join the group to prepare myself against forthcoming challenges of career option.

And I won't just need you for this but will appreciate if you can be my Mirror.

You are such a wonderful writer and your plan has clarity and intelligibility.

You are welcome.

Congratulations in advance. Please hit the ground running as soon as you finish your POP!

matoxy:
please, how can you extend this to people outside Lagos. I'm in Ilorin in Kwara State
Really interested.

I have noted your concerns. We will address other areas outside Lagos sooner than you think.

I would even like to see the model working live in Port Harcourt here.
So just follow the thread.
Secondly you can draw for the experience of the posters and direct participants and start something right there in Ilorin.

Online degree programmes are helping people acquire degrees all around the world without as much as a visa not to mention air tickets.

Reflect!

Hedonistically:
Very interesting thread. The OP's good English makes her more believable, and easier for someone like me to be persuaded.

I see 'experience' on two legs stalking the thread.

Oga, please don't just observe and compliment our work kindly bring your experience, expertise to bear on the thread through your contributions.

By so doing you will be helping so many people.

Thank you Sir.

MnenaSadiku:
Just seeing this thread. Karin dear, I'm with you all the way. Pls count me in. Thanks.

My dear friend, it will take more than Kilimanjaro to keep you out of this.

My thoughts are with you and indeed I am watching you always.

I can even feel your longing and thirst from far off.

Your foundation for your business towers will be laid in the next three months.

You can take that to the bank.

eay:
I'm really glad for the progress thus far, I think we can consider adding yaba,bariga and surulere to the list too... it is highly populated, student environs and it's a muster point for the Island workers too.
Cheers!
Nice work karin...God bless you

Wonderful contribution Eay.

There are indeed lots of other high density areas but we cannot take all of them at once. My preferred approach is for us to test run this project in a small sample territory.

We will deal with just 20 people originally and we will draw lesons from this stage before we proceed to the next level which will be expanded to cover other yearning areas in Lagos........including Ajah, Ikorodu, Bariga, Somolu etc

rose75:
Though the products are yet not specified, it will be nice to consider inherent dynamics in these areas. For instance, Ojota and Ketu are predominantly business areas unlike places like Ikeja and Maryland which are blend of business and Corporate environments. Therefore, it will be nice for the products in question to be for all classes of individuals.

Just a little input there. I know you have factored all these in, judging by the expertise oozing from your write-ups.

I honestly give up. Tell me, is there any real need to continue any further? Your analysis is just spot on.
these are the kind of contributions that will enrich this thread.

You can now see that this model is far superior to an ebook.

Thank you Rose 75!

rose75:
Hi Ma'am Karin,

Whatever it was that prompted you to open this thread is working for my favour. I appreciate you. I pledge total commitment to this course.
Your choice of locations is superb. The whole essence of starting a business is to get patronage, these areas you have mapped out will surely drive FMCGs considering the mix of people therein.

I am anxiously waiting for the next line of action.
Thanks once again.

Thanks Rose75! my heart skips a bit though.

I had to read your post repeatedly. There is an underlying intelligence in your posts.

I wonder what you are doing on this thread.

You already have the stuff of which champions are made of.

I suppose that you will dominate this thread. I do look forward to that.

All followers of this thread I advise that you read the bolded as many times as possible.
Those words cloak the very essence of successful selling especially as regards Direct and micro-selling.

This Rose 75 is too much.

75 Gbosas Please.

Friedweed:


It is a stain removal product.It can be used on tiles, toilets and for laundry.

This is even more interesting.

I will ask more questions about this product of yours later and maybe together with other posters even appraise the best model that can be used in selling it effectively.

I will sign off at this point.

I intend to continue the thread later tonight.

The next post will be most beneficial to a certain segment of players on this platform.

Please gird your loins.

We are on the threshold of a memorable take-off.

In getting down to business, this is the schedule I suggest we to follow;

1.We will identify the densely populated areas in Lagos where will anchor this project.
I am requesting that we together identify areas that we will launch this project in within the next few days.
I am suggesting the following areas;

Oshodi;
Mafoluku,
Airforce Base
Sogunle
Ladipo,
Bolade,
Charity

Ikeja
Cantonment
Ikeja Central/Computer Village
Anifowoshe
Oregun
Alausa
Maryland/Onigbongbo/Mende

Ketu
Shangisha
Ikosi
Demurin
Ojota
Ogudu/Ori-Oke
Alapere
Oworosonki

Agege
Dopemu
Cement
Mangoro/Capitol
Agege Central
Ogba/Okeira/Aguda
Ojodu -Grammar Schl/Berger

Alimosho
Egbeda
Akowonjo
Ipaja
Iyana Ipaja
Shasha

Please appraise the selection and make your suggestions. It is important to note that what informwed my choiuce of these locations is the

1.They are all on the mainland.
I am still of the opinion that the bulk of the population of lagos resides more on the Mainland rather than the Island.

2. They are contiguous so follow-up, logistics, deliveries will be easier and somewhat efficient.

3. Similar demographic Characteristics; Most of those neighbourhoods harbour people of similar Socio-economic altitude. their spending culture
and purchasing power will have very congruent attributes.

Please note that your contributions will be most helpful at this point.

Please make contributions at this point.

This will be an interactive project and we will try to have as much fun as possible.

Remember there are no costs and no solicitations for money whatsoever.

Always have in mind that this is just what it is; a platform to help each other grow into financial independence.

They would have graduated from this programme and should be able to stand completely on their feet and indeed should be able to mentor other people using this same format.

Please note that this affirmation on my own part is subject to just one prejudice. The individual himself/herself. Nothing else counts. Every other thing will be considered an excuse.

Also note that we will be ignoring some people as we cruise along and we will even replace some participants.

Team A will be constituted of the first set of people that will be mentored in this exercise.

This will only be the official group. In the course of the thread other interested Nairalanders may join in the project on the side-lines and may use the knowledge drawn from the thread to further their own interests.
They may also wish to publish their experiences on the thread.