Duncan Gichuki Irungu is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and the founder and team leader at Creative Gift Shop, a Nairobi CBD business that specializes in customized corporate and individual gifts and gifting experiences.
I am 26 years old. I started off in 2019 while at the university where I offered photography and photo mounting services to fellow students at a fee. I later started sourcing clients from Facebook and Instagram. This shifted the primary source of my clients from physical to online.
As the orders increased, I quickly realized that lack of a physical location was a challenge. Whereas it is essential to have an online marketing presence, it is also critical to have a physical location where you can connect with your customers and build on the online interactions, gain their trust, and authenticate your venture.
I opened my physical location in 2022 with an operating capital of Sh. 100,000. These funds went into rent, office partitioning and purchase of small office equipment.
It took the business two years to break even and get a steady flow of some returns. It took this long as we started by relying on online clients and referrals from our initial customers. The main challenge I faced was lack of trust from online clients. My business is more of an online gift store with a physical pickup location.
Many potential clients from far flung areas who couldn’t make it to the shop had difficulties making down payments for order processing. This meant that we had to accept orders without financial commitment, which was equal to taking production risks without knowing if the customer would come through with payments.
I learned that running a business this way can be dicey as you have to balance trust, risk and building your client base.
I have been juggling private practice with running a side business. I was at the university pursuing a Bachelors of Law degree when I started the gift shop business. I chose to continue running this business even after getting admitted to the bar as an advocate.
Beside it providing a secondary income stream, I have sentimental attachment to it. It was my first serious and successful entrepreneurship undertaking.
When I was starting this business, I had this misconceived notion that it would pick up immediately I set up a physical location. I had no plan or budget for the first three months. I failed to pay for at least three months’ rent upfront and set aside a digital marketing budget. A few weeks in, I realized that the business was not self-sustaining.Â
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I had to look for money elsewhere and invest it in the business to prevent what would have been an inevitable downfall. Today, the business has grown and now has corporate clients with whom we are engaged in branding retainer agreements.
I save my money in a Sacco. It has been effective to me since I can acquire LPO financing and other credit services to finance my business whenever I have capital-intensive branding gigs. Previously, I used to save my money through M-Shwari but it wasn’t very effective for me, especially with affordable and sufficient access to credit.
Over the time that I have been an entrepreneur, I have learned that a mentor is a rookie entrepreneur’s number one need. This will help you spot entrepreneurship booby-traps from a far. I have also learned that there is a lot of business leeway in networking with the right people.
Also, with a good product, a good marketing strategy, and superb customer service, money will always find its way to your business accounts.
A version of this profile feature on Duncan Gichuki Irungu was also published in the Saturday Magazine. The Saturday Magazine is a publication of the Nation Media Group.
