Online furniture retailer Ndianabasi Udonkang shares tips for success. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
Chief Executive, Furnish.NG, Ndianabasi Udonkang, has taken the industry by storm with an online furniture marketplace. Furnish.NG, a start-up focused on the provision of quality, affordable and wide range of furniture, home wares and interior décor items, was launched last April.
It uses modern technology for design and manufacturing of furniture and providing customers easy access to its extensive online catalogue,
Udonkang has seen online marketplaces explode in the last three years, helping fledgling start-ups become successful businesses.
Udonkang , who started the business with his savings of about N500,000, is proud of where the company is today. He is happy that though he has not hit the million dollar mark in turnover, he has created a strong business with a great earning power. “I am proud of the strides Furnish.NG has accomplished in just eight months of existence. With our dedicated staff, we’ve grown to become the largest online marketplace for furniture items and we are working by adding homeware and interior décor items soon. We see the race as a marathon not a sprint,“ he said.
When asked how the idea about the business come about? He explained: “I worked as a structural design engineer with Global Oceon Engineers Ltd between 2013 and 2014. I resigned from the company to launch Donkan Designs Technologies, an Architectural, Engineering, and Construction Design Company. My extensive skills in architectural designs came to bear as I was engaged by a particular company based in Ikoyi, Lagos, who regularly outsourced their interior architectural design jobs to my company. My experiences on various interior design projects for numerous clients led me to discovering the need for an easily accessible catalogue of affordable Furniture, homeware and Interior Décor items.
“This was because most of our clients preferred to have an online catalogue which they can easily have access to on the go and choose their choice of home accents, furniture, and other homeware items for their interior décor projects. So, I nurtured the idea for a while, before beginning to execute the idea which became Furnish.NG.
“I also launched Furnish.NG as a result of several bad experiences with local carpenters who were contracted to make some furniture items for my home. They did not stick to the quality of materials agreed upon, quality of finishing was poor, and they couldn’t keep to the time of delivery. My neighbour also had similar experiences. So, Furnish.NG was established to provide customers with peace of mind by guaranteeing customers with wide range of designs, quality of material and finishing, and timely delivery.
“Thirdly, quality furniture at showrooms are ridiculously expensive and out of reach of the average work-class Nigerian. Furnish.NG was established to provide affordable quality furniture and homeware items to Nigerians. By focusing on low margins on our items at larger turnovers, we believe we can break the myth that quality furniture must necessary be expensive,” he said.
Through his experience of building a startup, he has learnt many lessons. These include perseverance, innovation, being open to new ideas, hiring the right people and managing them right and being honest through the brand message.
He said: ”During the early days of the company, we had some issues with the quality of work outputted by and the timeliness of some carpenters and upholsters we engaged to produce our items. Now, we work with excellent and experienced craftsmen with the right expertise and work ethics. We have learnt never to compromise on quality no matter how minute the issue might be. As long as any issue has been discovered, it has to be fixed before delivery.”
Advising young entrepreneurs, he said: “One advice to young entrepreneurs is that they should be knowledge lovers and addicts for self-improvement and skill acquisition. With sufficient knowledge and skills, an entrepreneur can weather any storm through creative ways such as lean-startup methodology. A quick example of myself will give more insight.
“Before and after launching Furnish.NG, I have not paid any consultant to create or maintain any of our digital assets. Due to limited funding, I personally designed the current logo, setup the dedicated Amazon EC2 server, which Furnish.NG runs on, designed the e-commerce site, created all graphics materials needed before and after launch, which included PR materials, etc.
“I also actively maintain all these digital assets for the company. If I had relied on third-party professionals or consultants, I might not have launched the company because I would not have been able to afford the bills of consultants. So basically, by being multi-talented in web development, graphics designs, and Linux Server administration, I was able to save the company tremendous start-up cost. A startup founder, who lacks some basic skills and wholly relies on third-party professionals might not go far unless he has tremendous backup funds.”
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