Mrs Esonde Bakare is the owner of IceQueen Food and Beverages in Warri, Delta State, a major toilet tissue distributor for Belling Pegs and for other products. She calls herself a ‘Mompreneur’ as she has to combine her business with being a wife and mother of three children. Previously, she was just a small time retailer.
Although opportunities abounded in her retailer business, she could not take advantage of them due to lack of finance. ‘’When I started this business, I didn’t have a bus for distribution. I relied on people and used their buses. Also, my place (her shop) was at the back of the market while everybody comes to the market through the front’’ Bakare recounts.
One day, a friend informed her of the Grofin N200 million loan for growing businesses. To access the funds, she did not need collateral. But she needed business documentation which she has never thought of having. It was at that point she was referred to Ayodele Bamidele of DIC, a PIND-trained business service provider (BSP). And he started teaching her about record keeping and account book keeping and linking her to contacts that could help.
‘’In fact, before we keep record in the local way. When they bring the goods, we count it and when they sell, we write minus one, minus ten, minus fifty. Sometimes I might even lose track’’ Bakare recalls. ‘’But then, when I came in contact with the business service provider, from what he taught us, I started finding out that there were leakages. The book keeping aspect of it made me ask how much I am really making as a whole. This made me even more focused and interested in my every day running of the business’’.
Finally, she was able to meet the condition for the loan – good business documentation. So she got the loan. And started solving her business handicaps, one by one.
‘’The funds that was given to me was about 16 million naira. I bought a Toyota Hiace distribution van which was about N4.5 million naira. Also an accounting software, an MRS software. Then goods-in-transit insurance, life insurance, vehicle insurance. And the other N10 million is the working capital’’ she explains.
This has transformed her business beyond her belief. ‘’Those funds have impacted greatly on my business. I have gone past the ordinary retailer to the retailer who supplies to companies and supermarkets. I supply all the major super markets in Warri! And I have been able to catch those kinds of customers (big volume buyers) because now I have a lot of capital.’’
Her expanded customer base brought jobs for the youth. ‘’Previously, my core staffing was nothing to write home about. What I was able to do with my funds was increase my staff strength in terms of marketers. I call them my foot soldiers’’.
She was finally able to get the choice business location she had always desired. ‘’This new place can take three trucks of 4000 bundles of tissue conveniently and that is the capacity we wanted to be at with the injection of these funds. They call my place the beautiful tissue house’’.
With all the business upgrades, her sales have soared. ‘’From my baseline, I have had like 100% increase in sales. From ordering one truck, to buying two. Sometimes buying two trucks in a month from buying one in every two months. Sometimes I can do three trucks in a month depending on the orders’’.
For Mrs Bakare, the support from PIND’s trained BSP, Ayodele Bamidele is what changed her story ‘’because as a business person, it is who gives you connections and contacts that is helping your business grow’’. To her, it made a difference ‘’having somebody who was like the go-between, who has the experience and who will guide you, instead of you making mistakes and wasting time’’.
Bakare plans to give back to society from her big sales. ‘’I am looking at more distributorship that will help me empower these young people and take them off the streets’’.
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