May 23, 2013
Wanjiru Waithaka
Nairobi
It has long been an open secret that most of the pricey furniture in Nairobi’s exclusive showrooms is made by informal, or jua kali, carpenters operating in downtown markets such as Gikomba. And a sofa set retailing for Sh25,000 in Gikomba triples in price with no value addition by merely crossing a few streets to a showroom in an upmarket location.
A few enterprising jua kali artisans realised that merely owning the tools of production but with no access to the final consumer was a raw deal that mostly benefited retailers. The solution? Take the furniture to where the customers are – or in this case where they pass every day: the highways.
It has turned out to be a winning formula. Customers get high quality ready-made furniture at lower prices and the carpenters fetch something close to the market value of their products. “Majority of our customers are walk-in,” says Mr Joseph Macharia, manager of Mima Designs on Ngong Road. “While driving by they may see something attractive and even if they don’t intend to buy immediately, many stop to inquire about it. Once inside the showroom they see other items and we have the chance to market our products.”
Their ready-made furniture also appeals to people who would rather not deal with the hassles of custom-made furniture. “Getting the design right from a customer’s description is hard. Some customers can say the item did not turn out the way they wanted and if they don’t like it you are stuck with it,” he explains.
For Ms Agnes Ng’ang’a, a former schoolteacher, it is better to walk into a shop and buy the furniture instead of dealing with unreliable carpenters. “Some fundis (slang for carpenters) keep promising to complete the work by a certain date and never do so; you keep chasing them. With ready-made furniture what you see is what you get and you are sure of the quality when buying,” she says.
The household, garden and office furniture sold at Mima Designs is made at a workshop in Doonholm run by the owners of the business. Some of the furniture is also sourced from expatriates leaving the country. “They call us to their homes to value the furniture. Once we agree on price we bring the items to our showroom for resale,” says Mr Macharia.
The showroom is nothing fancy. With iron sheet roof, no ceiling and cement slabs for the floor, the main emphasis is functionality. It started out as a small area in the front yard of the three-bedroom maisonette that houses the offices. As the business expanded, so did the showroom to include the back yard as well as what was the garage of the house. Prices range from Sh50,000-60,000 for fast moving sofas to Sh130,000 for more exclusive pieces. Prices depend on the quality of the fabric and the size.
Other than competition from similar businesses along the busy highway, the recent entry of Nakumatt Prestige, a few hundred metres away has ushered in a different kind of rivalry.
“Competition from Nakumatt is a great threat because they are now stocking all the things we sell,” says Mr Macharia. As the shop prepares to take on this new challenge, one of the options the managers are considering is lowering prices on some items. Offering negotiable prices and payment by instalments is also likely to keep the business competitive because the larger supermarket chain does not have this arrangement. Mr Jack Mutua, manager of Juliet Wood Furniture on Mombasa Road, is not worried of competition from large supermarkets, including nearby Uchumi at Capital Centre.
“People have become wise, they go to Uchumi and if they see a design they like, ask us to make a similar piece of furniture,” he said. “They know that this furniture is made locally and we can also make good quality at a lower price.” He explains that a similar sofa set priced at Sh95,000 at their showroom would cost Sh200,000 at Uchumi and Sh100-120,000 on Ngong Road.
