I quit employment to start a branding venture
Ms Wambui Mundia displays some of the promotional items Plusify Limited has branded, at her office during the interview with Powering SMEs last week.
In 2016, Wambui Mundia quit her marketing job to venture into business. For years, she had observed with growing interest the steady rise in popularity of customised branding. She noticed that corporates were no longer the only one branding items but individuals too were branding gifts and event items such as clothing, notebooks, water bottles and party souveni
A quick market research helped her know it was a space she could step into, and in 2017, she started Plusify Limited.
“I needed to get into this space of promotional materials and branding. It is an area I was very interested in because even in my previous employment, I was a marketer.”
Branding companies
It didn’t take long after getting the company up and running, for challenges to come knocking on her door.
You see, Wambui started as a sort of middle person, she would get the order from a client, work with branding companies that had the equipment to do the job, then deliver to the client. Apparently, many others were in the same line of business and the service providers prioritised bigger orders.
“Many companies would not take my order because it was too small, about 20-50 pieces. I didn’t have control of delivery timelines and quality standards.”
Wambui did not let the challenge blur her vision, but instead took it as a lesson and started ploughing back incomes she made to buy her own sewing and branding machines.
By 2019, she had acquired enough equipment to handle her clients fully in-house. This was her big break and it put Plusify Limited on the map of Kenya’s top SMEs.
Also read:Dairy farmers beat brokers to wealth
Today, entering the company in Baba Dogo, Nairobi, one section of the manufacturing facility is filled with sewing machines where about a dozen workers stitch different garments ordered by clients.
In another section, branding machines rhythmically work on garments, notebooks, pens, water bottles and mugs. This is a result of nearly six years of hard work and sheer resilience.
“When a company wants a particular service, they advertise and we apply through tenders and pre-qualifications. Once awarded, our graphic designers do mock-ups for approval. If the client is happy with them we produce a physical sample for further approval and thereafter the entire order.”
The deliberate investment, though motivated by frustrations witnessed at the early days of starting her business, has triggered the company’s growth and overall performance.
Ms Wambui told Powering SMEs that the investment in equipment, skills and staff has scaled up Plusify’s capacity to produce up to 10,000 pieces of branded items in a month, during high demand seasons.
The company is a member of an association of local manufacturers and this has helped her company grow, since she is able to get contacts from where to get raw materials cheaply.
Government policies
Being a member of Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has also helped her understand government policies around her business line and update herself on trending issues within the industry.
Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) Acting CEO Tobias Alando says the lobby started an SME hub in order to support businesses in product development, market access, sourcing of raw materials and advising on quality standards and certification.
Ms Mundia displays some of the promotional items Plusify Limited has branded, at her office during the interview with Powering SMEs last week.
“SMEs have tremendous potential to make an impact on sustainable development through the employment they generate, the business practices they choose to adopt, the sectors in which they operate and their impact on innovation and diversification in the economy. Our initiatives geared towards SME Development include capacity building for manufacturing SMEs, to enable them to become more competitive and enhance their market access,” he says.
Ms Wambui notes that currently, the company is facing a challenge of sourcing skilled personnel for sewing and stitching tasks.
“Branding, getting unique promotional items is the space we really want to get into, and the area of gifting, where corporates would come to us requiring 1,000 branded bags, mugs and giveaways. That is the area we are investing very well in and that is the future we are looking at.
“We are now ready, we have built our muscle overtime. We have invested heavily in machinery and skills. We are really ready to go, we can serve any company however big it is,” Ms Wambui says.
Already, Plusify is supplying companies including Bamburi Cement, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) and Lake Turkana Wind Power with branded corporate wears and promotional items and wants to grow the reach to more corporates. Since over 90 percent of the company’s clients are corporates, she says, they rarely have walk-in clients.
