Inventory for my second hardware shop

Entrepreneur

About Me

My name is James Kariuki, born in Nairobi city in the sixties and brought up in Nyeri County. Nyeri is in the central highlands of Kenya where farming is the main activity of the local community. My father was a businessman while my mother was a housewife engaging in farming of coffee and tea.

I went to primary and later secondary school in Nyeri and later joined a technical college where I did a course in building construction. I did not get a job related to the course I did and I decided to start a hardware business where I sell building materials such as pipes, taps, locks etc. This is what I doing to date.

I am married with two children, a boy and a girl and they are both in college after clearing their secondary education.

My Business

As stated above, I am in hardware business specializing in plumbing materials. I started this business in Nairobi but later relocated to Mombasa. I started as a hawker where I would sell the hardware items from door to door but with hard work and serious savings, I managed to establish a store which serves as an outlet for my hardware items. However, I still have a challenge in that my store is in upstairs and therefore no visibility. I mostly rely on my loyal customers, referrals and occasionally a stray buyer.

For this reason, I have started another hardware store in a place called Ukunda – 20 Kilometers from Mombasa where I am operating from down stairs and the visibility of the business is excellent. This is a much smaller town but my market share is good due to low competition in this field. My main challenge right now is to buy adequate stock for this new branch since getting credit from the local lending institutions is very difficult and also very expensive.

I want to leverage on Zidisha loans to grow my business and take it to higher heights.

Loan Proposal

As mentioned above, I have two hardware shops in two different towns. The second one is about one year old and it is doing well. I intend to use money from this loan to add more hardware stock so as to retain and attract new clients.

I mostly want to stock electrical materials such as cables, conduits and wall sockets which move quite fast in this area due to many construction sites going on. This is likely to continue for some time since this is a town that is growing rapidly.


This expansion will in turn increase my sales and my business profitability.

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