Inventory of hardware store items

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

With first loan, I will be able to stock my hardware store with an assortment of plumbing materials such as water taps and a few pipes. This will give the people in the area confidence in my business and I am hoping to build on this momentum to accelerate my business growth.

I want to use this first loan as an entry point to Zidisha in what I am hoping will be a long term relation that will lead to benefits that will translate into growth and expansion of my hardware business.

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Loan Info

Lenders