IBUKUN AWOSIKA is chairman, First Bank of Nigeria Limited and founder/CEO, The Chair Centre Group, including The Chair Centre Limited, Sokoa Chair Centre Limited, Furniture Manufacturers Mart, TCC Security Systems and Cubes & Boxes Limited. It has been 30 years of running a successful business in Nigeria and she speaks with Nigerian CEO Magazine on the challenges and triumphs of her business, how businesses can grow, government’s intervention and encouraging optimism in the Nigerian system. Excerpts:
30 years of doing business in Nigeria
When I look at the last 30 years of the Chair Centre Group, I think about my workers, and the people who had made it possible to build out on the dream of a young woman of 25 going on 26, to build for the long term of 30 years and build to this point, and so when things are hard, you think about those who have built together with you and you are not quick to give up because they are part of your story. There are multiple factors that affect a manufacturing business as opposed to a services business. I can understand some of the issues because I have been on both sides.
We stated out in 1989 January essentially as a local manufacturing company producing furniture. And along the path, based on certain limitations as opposed to where I wanted to go in terms of the vision of the company, I started exploring ways for us to be able to produce in a sustainable manner, the same quality in large volume over time.
You can have the best imagination about designing, but your ability to execute it would depend on what you have to play with in terms of machinery and resources. So we invested in that, and then used the factory to produce for our own retail customers through our retail business which is the Chair Centre, and then process for other factories.
Importance of delegation of duties and leaving a legacy
My people are fully empowered and I delegate responsibilities without any issues. I mean, think about it, if that was not the case, when the corporate world became intense, it would have been difficult, it would have had great impact on the business because one of the things that has always troubled me about Nigeria is that there are many great Nigerian businesses that had been built over time, but a lot of those business had died as the owner died.
As a young woman, as I grew my business, I kept asking myself, ‘if my business dies when I die, I’ve wasted my life, because if I spent all of my youth building, and then it goes down just because my time is up, then I’ve left no legacy. Then I set a target for myself that by the time I’m 50, I’d like not to be at the centre of driving my business every day, so when I became 48, we engaged a firm to consolidate all our companies into the group, and we tried to identify the talents within the company that were able to take the positions that were open and where we needed people from outside to do that so that I could pull back from being at the centre of the business. So essentially, my work is strategy and new businesses, but the everyday running of the business is not mine, I don’t like operations even as a person. I probably did it in building the business because I had no choice.
I can think of the idea, I love the ideation and the execution of the idea but once it becomes a process, I’m bored and on to something else which is probably why I ended up with multiple businesses. So the people who really make the business go on are my team because they are the ones who drive it every day and my only gift to them is to fully empower them to be able to do what they need to do in order for us to continue.
Pains of an ethical business woman in 30 years of doing business in Nigeria
It is your responsibility to set your own agenda; it’s your responsibility to fight to maintain what you believe and what you consider to be right or wrong. What you will also find is that, people are looking for value in many ways, and over time, what you need to do is to show them the value that you bring to the table at every opportunity. Now, will you have every opportunity? No. But you see, the opportunities you lose on account of your value system, that’s your opportunity cost for what you believe and it’s a price you must be willing to pay. Now, one thing I can say categorically is that there are enough decent Nigerian institutions that also want to do things right, otherwise, we will not have survived. That’s really what that points to because the only reason we’ve survived for 30 years and still in business, is because we found like minds along the path as we sought to deliver value.
Now, one of the things we did to make up for the things we would not do, is to make sure that we were indispensable to our customers. I had a saying in the early days that all our customers had to do was encounter us the first time. With our dedication to our business, in terms of the quality of product that we sought to deliver to you, and with sincerity in terms of the service that we sought to give, and with our diligence in servicing you over time, we always sought partnerships with customers rather than a sale because a sale is a one-off, one-time thing. Partnership is a relationship, and when you seek to build a relationship, you’d find that partnership is a weapon for many of those things. When people get to know you and get to know the value you bring to the table for them in terms of products and service, and personal interactions, you would find that, yes, there are people that would still make a choice against you for those things, but there are many decent people who will not.
All in all, you know the more you stick to something, the more confident you become at it, and the longer you’re in a space and delivering value, the longer you cannot be ignored. There are many days you want to cry because you know of a transaction you’re better at, you can better deliver but, it isn’t given to you because of what you stand for. Nevertheless, we’ve learnt patience of waiting for our time within the context of our business, and we have consistently sought to fight for our opportunities with everything that we have.
So, it’s in building for the long term, it’s in delivering quality to the customer, it’s in consistency of your values, it’s in becoming indispensable to your customers in many ways.
In what way is your sector evolving?
If we talk about furniture, I think sadly, we watch a lot of companies come and go because they haven’t been able to survive. But also, we’ve watched a number of incursions into the sector, especially Chinese companies who are coming into the markets. There is also quite a massive smuggling sector, because technically, by the law till today, complete furniture importation to Nigeria is actually banned, but I guess what you have to do is drive around, either the high street of Awolowo Road, V.I, or go to markets like Alaba and all of that, and there is furniture everywhere.
So, we’ve had to learn to compete with both legal competition and illegal competition, and what we’ve always sought to do is to find how to have advantages over those competitions despite their tasking proposition because if you are paying duties on everything as you should, and you have a lot of taxation left, right and centre and you’re still dealing with diesel to produce and all sort of power issues, and somebody else is bringing stuff through other means without the cost outlay that you have, they will create a tough competitive environment for you.
They do not create the jobs that you create because I could import billions of Naira furniture and run my business with five to ten people. However, there is no way I can produce that without running a factory of hundreds of people. Also, a lot of capital investment is involved which includes machinery and operational cost. So, it’s a commitment to our country as a firm believer in the fact that, there is no way we’re going to survive without some level of manufacturing activities in our country. There is no way we can create jobs enough if all segments are just reliant on importation because with that, you’re creating the jobs in the manufacturing country. Your people are only involved in sales and installation.
You know there are many days you have to convince yourself it’s not just about you because there are also days where I think to myself, if I sold all the asset of this company today, and I put my money in the bank and get interest on it, I’ll be wealthier than I am leaving the business operating because you have all the money in cash. I’d have no liabilities to carry, no electricity to look for, all of the factors you have to build with. You pay your taxes but you will also be earning decent interest on your capital that you put in the bank.
