Here’s why grit is so important for growth

Timothy Muturi, 28, serves a customer at one of his shops in Meru. [Olivia Murithi, Standard]

When Timothy Muturi sat his final KCSE exam, he had dreams of becoming an engineer.

It never crossed his mind that he would get into business. But after he got his results, where he scored a C+, he was faced with the reality that his parents couldn’t afford to educate him any further.

To support himself and help ease the financial burden on his parents, Muturi, who’s now 28, approached a business owner who sold movies in bulk.

The beginning

They struck an agreement where the shop owner would give Muturi a certain number of movies that he would hawk and earn a commission on the sales.

The commissions, however, were low in a harsh business environment. Most people were wary of buying his movies as they had been defrauded before, and Muturi had no way to prove his discs were not empty.

But he remained persistent and turned on the charm.

With time, he moved the product consistently and gained the trust of his supplier.

As his client base grew, Muturi found himself travelling outside of his Meru town base to areas like Isiolo, Maua, Nanyuki, Timau, Nkubu and Chogoria to supply movies.

Business was good, but he soon realised that his profit margins remained as little as Sh10 per movie, despite all the work he was putting in and the additional gains the shop owner was registering. This realisation got Muturi to start saving so he could put together enough capital to open his own business.

After a year, he had set aside Sh30,000.

Dream to reality

With nothing else but this money in his pocket and a big dream, Muturi set out to look for his own business premises.

“I didn’t have money for rent or deposits for a proper office, so when I found a small cubicle that was more of a corridor than a room, I took it. The room was slanted so I served customers while crouched inside and they stood outside on the busy walkway,” Muturi says.

However, there wasn’t much he could do with Sh30,000. He couldn’t afford to buy a TV or DVD machine for his shop, so he carried his home TV and continued buying movies in bulk from suppliers.

He decided to resell these movies in bulk, even though there’s more money in retail sales.

“But my stock was so little that I got anxious whenever a customer showed interest in buying more than one item because then I would be left with gaps where I took the movies from,” he says.

But again, grit, patience and charming the customers worked in his favour.

Despite his negligible stock, Muturi was soon was poaching customers from more established and better financed competitors.

Still, there were days he would have to close his shop and hawk movies to find more customers.

Muturi says he would take home between Sh500 and Sh1,000 from his stall, and about Sh700 from hawking.

He was a bachelor with few needs, so he saved most of these daily earnings.

The naysayers

But while trying to stay focused on his dream, he came across his fair share of detractors.

Chief among them were the business owners who neighboured his stall who would laugh at him openly, making fun of how bare his shelves were.

And when he started growing his stock and getting more customers, they would complain that the queues were blocking the entrances to their premises.

The shop owners would also complain about the music he was playing to draw in clients, and go as far as calling the landlord to demand Muturi’s eviction.

But he kept on going, and a year and a half later of steady growth and minimal expenses, Muturi had enough to buy a new computer, duplicator machine and blank discs. These items kick-started his self-production. Within no time, he was so busy that he had to hire an assistant.

Muturi’s ability to connect with the younger generation saw many of them flock to his stall, especially during the holidays, which caused further rifts with his neighbours.

Another year went by, and the stock by now was so much that it hampered movement inside his tiny shop. Muturi knew it was time to move to bigger space.

Fortunately, a stall opened in the same building a few doors down. He decided to move to the new premises, but still keep the small stall open.

However, business at his first premises dwindled after poor management led to a drop in sales. To salvage the situation, he told his shop attendant to refer customers to the new location.

The naysayers

His bigger space also gave him the opportunity to diversity his offferings, so he started stocking mobile phone accessories. And he found high demand for phone cases, cables and related items.

Six months after setting up a second shop, he decided to close his tiny stall and move everything to a larger location. Here, he increased the stock of accessories. The move paid off, with the accessories being a bigger hit than the movies.

But with more customers came the challenge of raising enough cash to stock everything they wanted, especially because most of his clients wanted products in bulk for reselling.

Four years later, Muturi has honed his craft, and makes sales of between Sh20,000 and Sh25,000 a day. He averages a daily profit of Sh4,000.

He also opened another shop that registers sales of between Sh30,000 and Sh40,000, with Sh6,000 in profit daily.

Thanks to his perseverance, or grit, his patience and the diligent reinvestment of most of his money into his business, Muturi says his initial investment of Sh30,000 has grown into a formidable empire in just four years.

And even with the demands of a family now, the father of one says he’s attained the financial maturity needed to keep his business going.

“My dream now is to bring together enough money so that I can import merchandise myself instead of relying on other people. I want to keep expanding my business.”

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