₦airaland Forum

Hello Guys and a happy new year to you all.

A lot of Nairalanders have tried persuading me to share my experience on how I started my accessories business, others have been asking series of questions on where they can source for certain products and another percentage of individuals have asked for a business plan.

I have been trying so hard to create the time but now is the time...I am ready now to kickoff with it.

Sit back as I dish you with loads of tangible info on how I started, my failures, my successes and how you can start yours too and make it better than myself.


If you need to reach me on WhatsApp, my link is on my signature or you can add my number manually, 08136495877

HOW IT ALL STARTED FOR ME
Pushing out ones story on social media platform or on the internet is one that most people are not so convinient with doing because they have the intuition that it may be used against them sometime in the future but I am gladly sharing my story for those that may be determined to listen and get to benefit one or two things from my story.

I was an spill-over/extra year student of a particular Nigerian University. I had 1 course for the 1st semester of the session and 1 for the 2nd semester of the session and by my calculation, I'll be spending approximately 4hrs in the classroom on a weekly basis but there is 120hrs in 5 working days of a week, so what happens to the remaining 116hrs that I won't be in school?

This is what I did...

Before the session began, I toured around one of the accessories markets in Lagos, looking for those nooks and crannies where they sell accessories in wholesale and retail quantities and compared their prices with what they sold at school. To my greatest surprise, people in school made twice the amount they invested apart from transportation cost. Some even made much more.
Imagine a Kodak cable sold at wholesale price of #100 each and someone selling this same cable at the rate of #700/#800. Assuming transportation is #100 per cable and miscellaneous is #50, that makes a profit of #550/#650. That makes x5 or x6 the amount he bought the cable. Then, tempered glass of #100 being sold for #500 and some sell as high as #1500 for iPhone tempered glass.
Seeing this money making opportunity, I decided to "grab the bull by the horn" and start my own in the smallest way that I can.
I joined every marketing channel available on social media, joined every group on WhatsApp that had people in my university and started advertising products that I was going to sell even before I bought them.
I compiled a list of people that want to buy and used the little penny I had to purchase these products and even risked buying some that I didn't regret.
When the semester commenced, I delivered the products and got my money.

Of course I had the numbers of those I bought stuff from but I didn't get the opportunity to use them as I had a very slim demand of products after I had sold what I brought.
I then thought to myself that I had to create a more robust marketing mix and I decided to create a broadcast list on WhatsApp and a group for those that sell/buy phones, laptops and accessories since it is related to my business. This step paved waves for me as it increased the customer base I had within my premise.

The story continues...

Very well. One Like for you.

You gon' make it Big. You're real and innovative.

aboyaji:
Very well. One Like for you.

You gon' make it Big. You're real and innovative.

Amen...thanks

Hello guy!

I'm really sorry my work has been eating too much of my time.
I've been receiving messages on WhatsApp that my thread has not been completed. I'm sorry but this thread is a walkthrough process and I can't say there is an endpoint as it is meant to be an interactive thread even though we are yet to get to that point.

Forging Ahead...BUSINESS REQUIREMENT

People have been asking questions like:
1. How much do I need to start my accessories business?
2. My budget is 500k, what can that buy?
3. Can 20k fill my shop?
4. How much can I sell my accessories for?

And many more questions

The idea of starting a business or becoming an employer of labour is really sweet but you can have either the head or tail of the coin depending which step you follow.

Business requires planning, understanding the business, taking only calculated risks, patience, money, versatility and many more principles.

I'm not perfect in business but I know for sure that I can put you through basic things based on my few years experience both as a business owner and as someone that works in an organization.

Let's take these basic requirements one after the other

1. PLANNING: Planning is the most paramount phase of business and it's the first thing that needs to be done. Planning can't be effective if you have no idea of any subject in view.

Before planning on how you want your business to look like,

a. You must have a business model to example. Look at the reason why that particular business has been standing firm for years, look at the challenges they face and how they tackled these challenges, look at their weakness and see if there is a way you can create a solution because you can adopt the solution into your business and level up to them or overtake them. It could be their poor customer relationships, their product selection.

I went to help a friend make a purchase somewhere around town yesterday, I felt raging anger and the urge to leave as soon as I came because of the poor attitude the lady at the desk portrayed. Her response and charisma really put my off the scale. They obviously would have lost a potential customer because of her customer relationship.

Sometimes, just the color you paint your shop would make people want to leave because they don't feel homely. Other times, the music you play and many more things you didn't know customers want.
Don't go out of your way to satisfy customers but do as much as you can to make them happy and that might be just the reason why they will keep coming back.

b. Ensure you get a reliable (in terms of quality and availability) supply channel close enough to you because two things customers hate are the fact that your products take a short while to spoil and the fact that you don't have products whenever they come asking.
Apart from the fact that have unquenchable thirst for more, your supplier has to be close enough to you because of when you calculate the cost of a product and add cost of logistics to it, it might end up becoming too costly by the time you include your profit to it.

c. Study the competitive market. You need to have a solid idea about what's going on around your market at every point in time. Study what customers really need and try to make it available as long as it's within your scope of business. Study the price fluctuation, study the demand and supply curve.
This constant research would help you improve your business because you can forecast what lies ahead.

d. You must determine how much you need, how to raise the capital to start and manage the business and how you intend spending the raised capital at the end of the day.

When people do some financial planning, they fail to highlight some really important factors that may cause waste of financial resources. Every penny to be spend it very essential to the business growth or depreciation.

How much you need to start and manager the business depends on the cost of purchasing the products, transporting them to your distribution outlet or shop as the case may be, miscellaneous costs (like money for feeding daily, utility bill and other unforseen expenses). Before you start a business, calculate the financial need for that business for the next 5 years and if you can't come up with the entire capital, come up with the amount that can run the business for close to a year so that profits from the 1st year will service the 2nd year and on till the 5th year.

After planning, what next...

What follows is "making your plans known" i.e. putting your pen to paper.
Draft out your business plan to serve as a guide to you. Your plan should be futuristic and it should contain goals for your business.

Kindly note that no matter how big or small your business is, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Therefore, come up with your business plan today and keep updating the plan as time goes on.

Next, I will be explaining the other 5 requirements mentioned above.

Feel free to comment below or ask me questions on WhatsApp.
If you need a business plan, you can also contact me.

My WhatsApp link is in my signature