YouTube tutorials helped me fix my furniture enterprise

Sara Reeves travelled to Kenya from Australia frequently between 2006 and 2012 in pursuit of her career in tourism. However, she was latter smitten by Kenya and made up her mind to settle here.

She says between 2007 and 2011 she was travelling biannually between Kenya and Australia and could not resist Nairobi’s magnetism.

“During this time Nairobi was rapidly changing, with new road infrastructure, hotels being built, new restaurants, etc. It had a very dynamic energy,” she says.

“With each visit, it seemed Nairobi was changing more in six months than other cities change in five years. As someone with an entrepreneurial spirit, this energy was hard to resist. And so I made the decision to relocate here in 2012.”

Ms Reeves had studied psychology at a university in Melbourne, Australia before pursuing a career in tourism. However, Kenya’s tourism experienced volatility between 2011 and 2015, hurting her career. And so Ms Reeves, having settled in Kenya, began to experiment with alternative sources of income such as bee-keeping, events management, and ultimately furniture-making, to pay the bills.

However, the venture that would have bright prospects is furniture making. The business took root as he was seeking to furnish a new house she had moved into. She was in need of good furniture but could not get ones that were quality and affordable

"So, I thought to myself how hard was it to make furniture. And if Julius Yego can win a gold medal at the Olympics by watching YouTube videos, then surely I can learn how to make furniture using online tutorials," she tells Enterprise.

So, armed with a positive attitude, she asked her watchman to accompany her to Gikomba where she bought shipping pallets and tomato crates.

Her first attempts on furniture were a bed and a bookshelf. This was then followed by outdoor furniture sets whish she made using brightly coloured Kitenge fabrics.

"Friends began to ask us to make pieces for them. And from those humble beginnings, we began our first entry into the world of furniture-making,"

Despite her determination, it was not a sustainable business model as she was working from her living room. It was also very costly to get supplies each time she ran out of them.

After a year she took a break from the startup.

In 2016 she was approached by the World Bank to steer a project called WorkShop Nairobi. The purpose of the initiative was to identify the challenges and barriers facing the informal furniture-making industry and address them through training and capacity building.

The project motivated her to get back to the business once more after realising that hers was a viable idea with a lot of potential.

" As a largely self-taught and self-governed industry, there are gaps in knowledge and business skills of the jua kali sector so the training programmes for artisans focused on soft and hard business skills including design, wood selection, finishing, customer service, sustainability, costing, pricing and professionalism," she notes.

In the one-year programme, she led the expansion of the WorkShop Nairobi business to manufacture a range of quality, locally-made furniture, to help generate income for training.

WorkShop Nairobi is now in its fifth year as a successful furniture company.

"I credit my time at WorkShop Nairobi with giving me an in-depth understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by the informal sector workforce, and it motivated me to continue working in the industry to do what I could to harness the untapped potential in our furniture-making district," she says.

In 2017, after her tenure at the WorkShop ended, she started her own company, Love Artisan, pumping in Sh300,000 in savings.

"At the time, I didn't have any ready designs, or a clear plan on what style our furniture would be, but I was determined and I believed there was a space for us in the furniture landscape of Nairobi," she adds.

She launched her workshop a month to the 2017 general elections and due to the instability experienced after the polls, it was a big challenge.

Even with that, Ms Reeves was able to retain her eight carpenters until the end of the election turmoil, which she terms as one of her "proud moments."

"So nowadays when we have a tough week, or a tough month, or even particularly during this period of Covid-19, I think back to our beginnings and know that we have the resilience to keep moving forward," she says.

Love Artisan is now three years old and has a team of 14 artisans working full time – including her watchman whom he made the first pieces with.

They mainly focus on upholstered furniture.

"If you want a bright pop of colour in the corner of your living room, or a bold, statement piece or conversation starter, that's what we specialise in," says Ms Revees.

During her time in the tourism industry, she learnt a lot about the process of hand-made textiles such as bogolanfini (mudcloth) from Mali and “can now employ that knowledge in our furniture-making business”.

She uses a range of fabrics sourced from across the continent including Burkina Faso, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Congo and East Africa.

"Our customers are a mix of Kenyans, expatriates, NGOs, offices and corporations," she says.

In her experience, she says people and companies want to support local businesses, so long as they do not compromise on quality, value for money, design and professionalism.

"Every piece that leaves our workshop is quality checked to ensure we always meet our clients' highest expectations and we guarantee our workmanship."