Photo Credit: Snapshots from a Life
Oh WOW!!
It has been one h*** of a ride for Nigerian businesses so far this year. Many businesses are confused and currently in limbo.
For those businesses that have physical business locations in Lagos, it is even worse. Let’s see:
- The weather is sweltering in this neck of the woods. So you are dependent on air conditioners to keep your office/shop cool. But ALAS! – there’s no light to run them. Ok we’ll just use generators, but hey! – there’s no fuel too. So you are left with a hot office/shop that even YOU do not want to be in, not to talk of your potential customers. I mean, sometimes potential customers walk in just to cool down, and in the process of walking around doing just that, they end up buying, and keep coming back. Or they actually come to get something, but the HEAT..!! Now pray tell, who wants to go back to a shop where the only memory you have was your OMG-level sweating?
- Money is simply not circulating. There is no spending. The Food and FMCG sectors are the best-performing sectors these days (I mean we MUST eat), but even those have been hit. The luxury brands within the sector are not enjoying as much custom as they’ve been accustomed to.
- The FX crisis has reached interesting highs in recent times. Particularly for business people who import and those schooling abroad. Many Nigerian foreign students have left school and are at home trying to get into the local universities they scorned prior. For businesses the story has three sides, no four actually.
- Group 1: This group has been waiting for the crisis to settle while they sell their old stock. It doesn’t look like it will any time soon. They’re beginning to contemplate new options.
- Group 2: This group decided to continue business as usual – albeit at increased costs to their businesses. Their logic being that Nigerians like foreign things. So they will buy anyway. What they are beginning to realize is that there is a limit to what most Nigerians will spend. You see, while everything else has gone up, the incomes have not. In fact there is a decrease in REAL income, and a lot of lost jobs. And with that comes spending prioritization for families and businesses. Most Nigerians are in survival mode. This group is beginning to contemplate new options.
- Group 3: This group’s businesses have shut down. They simply could not survive. They didn’t have pockets as deep as those in the other three groups, and borrowing from the banks is just harsh here. For them, it’s a No-No. In any case, the banks here would rather lend to those in Group 2.
- Group 4: This group has decided to look inwards. How can these imported products that hold us captive be duplicated here? How can we make them as compelling, functional, and also unique (I mean, you don’t want everyone copying your products before you make your money!!)? It is certainly more expensive to produce here, but how can we produce good quality at a reasonable price to the end customer? This group is the one touting the #ProudlyNigerian, #MadeinNigeria #BuyNigerianToGrowTheNaira hashtags on all their social media posts. (…Social Media in Nigerian Business – Hmmmn, I digress. That’s fodder for another post:-) ). Anyway this, I believe, is the group that will survive, even beyond the FX crisis.
My business belongs to the fourth group. Yes, we can survive – if our current cash holds out while we execute our great business re-strategy, and if our customers replenish our cash by patronizing our “#MadeInNigeria great-quality products. In fact, we will survive. Some of us have no choice BUT to survive.
Snapshots from a Life author June Anasiudu writes funny, fun, and thought-provoking life lessons gleaned directly over the years, or from others' lives. The objective being to bring laughter, learning, and healing. Her stories, mostly true-life, aim to help her readers quiet the everyday chaos in their lives so they can relax and learn to focus on being the superhumans they were created to be, weeding out the unimportant frivolities in life.
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True talk babe! We need to look inwards. Ideas rule the world, they say. And God said He has given us power to create wealth. We have it in us. There is a need for Nigerians to channel their creative skills in the positive direction to improve the lives of people while at the same time making money for themselves….