Business Daily (Nairobi)
Wanjiru Waithaka
2 September 2007
Modern women long ago threw out their petticoats dismissing them as an outdated 1970s phenomenon much like the Afro hairstyle.
But for Catherine Mwangi, this undergarment represents her journey from hawking potatoes in an open air market to owning a profitable business with 10 employees.
After spending many years as a housewife, Ms Mwangi began selling potatoes in Nairobi, but two years later she ventured into clothes instead.
"I got a shed along Jogoo Road and started selling headscarves, which I got from the women of Somali descent in Eastleigh. Then after some time I thought of getting a stall at Uhuru Market and mixing the scarves with other clothes," she says.
It was here that she bought a manual sewing machine and initially she would sew and sell petticoats in the same tiny stall. Ms Mwangi's story is unique. A piece of courage and entrepreneur spirit.
In 1994, the owner of the stall decided to sell it and she jumped at the opportunity to own her own stall and bought it for Sh350,000.
"At that time I never used to bother with banks and would sell and store the cash in a paper bag, which I kept in the stall," she says adding that she never used to worry about thieves unlike today.
She saved part of her daily takings and paid off the stall owner slowly then afterwards as the business grew she started buying more sewing machines and upgraded to electric machines.
But frequent power blackouts forced her to relocate the sewing part of the business to the basement of a nearby building off Jogoo Road. Although the situation improved, unscheduled blackouts are still a problem and sometimes cause her to lose a whole day's work.
At the new premises, she met Loise Wahome, a fellow entrepreneur, who introduced her to the Kenya Women Finance Trust (KWFT) in 2004 where she got her first loan.
"At that time, I was getting big orders from Tanzania but was unable to fill them because I lacked capital. Often I ended up asking the same clients for loans to buy materials," she says.
KWFT gave her Sh200,000, which she used to stock up and since then she's never looked back. As her business grew so did her loan amounts and currently she's servicing a Sh700,000 loan with a monthly repayment of Sh39,000.
Ms Mwangi, who is the sole proprietor, expanded her premises and now operates from three large rooms in the same building. One room is a beehive of activity as a dozen employees race to complete a large order for 300 dozen petticoats for a buyer in Tanzania.
She also makes baby urine pads that are worn over nappies, commonly used by those who cannot afford Pampers.
Ms Mwangi says that on average every week, she gets large orders of between 200-300 dozen petticoats and 100 dozen baby urine pads which are separate from the items she makes to sell in her stall at the market.
In another room with 12 knitting machines employees are busy making sweaters for school children and babies, a business she ventured into two years ago.
A third room is where all the fabrics are cut using a cutting machine and where finished products are stacked. "Customers with large orders collect from here and the rest I sell at the stall.
The large orders are mostly from Tanzania but I also get many customers who buy to sell in shops upcountry," she says.
She has never travelled outside Kenya but made her first sale to Tanzania after a customer from the country visited her stall at Uhuru Market and she has got subsequent customers purely through referrals.
Her stall is busy with a steady stream of customers who buy mostly petticoats at the stall that go for Sh45 upwards.
Ms Mwangi has four permanent employees based at the stall with six others in the sewing premises complemented by 25 casuals.
"Petticoats with lace are the most popular and the peak periods are December to February when parents are buying items for school," she says. Ms. Mwangi laughs when asked where she learnt the skills to run a clothing business.
"I still don't know how to sew clothes and I hire other people to do that but the business side I have taught myself over the years," she says.
"I don't really have a system for separating money to be used for the business and household or personal expenses. Whenever I need anything for the house or school fees I just take it out of the daily takings.
The most important thing is to ensure the business is always running by paying employees and rent on time," she says.
Veronica Karoki, Unit Manager at KWFT Eastlands region says many of their clients are like Ms Mwangi and are often not very good at keeping records of the business.
"Initially when you ask them how much the business is bringing in sometimes they cannot tell you with certainty because they often take money out of the business to pay for personal things," she says.
"Before giving them loans we analyse their cash flows in order to determine how much they can afford to borrow without straining.
Our rule is that monthly takings should be four times the monthly loan repayment."
To address this problem KWFT organizes one day training seminars for its clients annually where they learn business skills .such as bookkeeping.
This entrepreneurial mother of one child aged 12 dreams of buying a plot in the future and building a bigger factory. She also wants to restart the tailoring school she had opened two years ago but later closed because her clothing business was taking up all her time.
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