Books

Booksellers find growth on Instagram

RAFUBOOKS

Vincent Milewa, the founder and CEO of Rafubooks.com at his office in Kilimani, Nairobi on January 24, 2022. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NMG

Growing up, Vincent Milewa, the owner of Rafu loved books, but just because as a last-born child in a family of nine, he would use them as a roadmap to escape poverty.

Then he started loving them more than at school, with a preference for business and motivational books.

Then he founded Rafu, which means bookshelf in English.

“My co-founder and I set up the online bookshop in 2018 out of frustration of getting hard copy books delivered at our doorstep. Initially, we thought about starting a platform for used books, but the more I walked around and looked at the bookstores, I realised there was a problem with getting the right book at the right time. There was no bookshop which offered to bring me my books speedily to my home,” he says.

Now with an online following of over 10,000 followers on Twitter and about 25,000 on Instagram, the online book shop, has grown to deliver books promptly all over Kenya.

They operate on an online model where they stock and plan deliveries from a small office in Nairobi. This model, he says, helps to avoid a situation where a customer walks into one store, finds a book is out of stock and is to be picked up from a different shop.

Starting out, he had to contend with a lack of trust by clients due to the nature of Kenyan online businesses. Once, a delivery was delayed, and the client got angry and cancelled her order, forcing them to entice her with a 50 percent discount.

“There is also the belief that online businesses do not deliver. Your client cannot see you, so you need to build trust by allowing the client to pay on delivery. When we started, we delivered for free to build our brand,” he says.

“Now the main challenge is getting the right books on time. There are also many counterfeit books which are cheaper but of poor quality,” he says.

A field day

Partnering with authors and publishing houses—both Kenyan and international— has paid off in ensuring a consistent supply of books.

“For purposes of transparency, we set up an online portal which allows authors to onboard onto our system to track their sales and payments. This has been one of our major successes,” he says.

The pandemic may have disrupted people’s live but not the purchase of books.

Vincent explains that the bookshop had a field day during the pandemic, as people stayed home, and needed books to occupy their minds.

“We would get clients calling to buy as many as 10 books at a go,” he says.

“We also saw record-high sales in January, contrary to the belief that most people are broke in January, and most of our buyers are women,” he adds.

Now an avid reader, his best books include ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear, ‘Shoe Dog’ by Phil Knight, ‘Black Swan’ by Nassim Taleb, ‘Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup’ by John Carreyrou, ‘Linchpin’ by Seth Godin and ‘Thursdays’ by Jackson Biko.

He reads at least 30 books a year.

“Last year, I read 28 books, 32 the previous year, and 47 books in 2018,” he says, adding that he hopes to see Rafu growing to become the Amazon of East Africa.

Another bookseller

For 27 year old, Pauline Muchai, founder of Attic Bookshop, her entry to the world of books was informed by a gap in sale of children’s books, as opposed to a passion for reading.

In fact, she started actively reading when she set up her a physical shop in Nairobi’s Central Business District

In December 2019, she started selling books on Instagram, before opening a physical shop in February 2020, a month before Covid-19 hit.

“I opened a bookstore to sell children’s books, because from experience, there was a gap. We later got into other categories because of demand. Parents would come to buy books for their children, and want to purchase some for themselves,” says Pauline.

Most of her stock is used books, and she also imports directly from publishers. Now, her shop boasts of 22,000 titles.

Children books sell best, followed by business and motivational, then novels and biographies, she says.

About 60 per cent of shop’s sales are from online clients who reach out through Facebook, Instagram and the website. Clients from Nairobi get same day deliveries, and next day countrywide deliveries.

“We had the highest sales, between March and October 2020, and the best we have made to date,” she says.

“Now, most of our sales are from return customers, whom we got during the pandemic. Others are from referrals, and people donating to charities or setting up home libraries,” she adds.

Last year, the most read books included: ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ (children’s series) by Jeff Kinney, ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear, ‘Ikigai’ by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaleid Hosseini and all Harry Potter books by J.K Rowling.

Setting up the physical bookshop, and hiring a rider cost her about Sh200, 000. The team has grown to three workers, in addition to casual riders.

“The main challenge now is e-books, which eat into our market because they are extremely cheap. Our only saving grace is the fact that many people still insist on buying hardcopy books. We plan to expand the shop,” she says.