Introduction:

My name is Isaiah Githinji Kimani, 38 year old, married with 1 wife and we have a daughter.

I come from a family of 3 boys and 1 girl. My parents are currently living in the countryside while I and family are living here in Nairobi.

My Childhood:

I grew up in Naivasha town and attended my primary school from 1985-1993 .

My parents then were entrepreneurs running a retail shop. My childhood was comfortable with my parents able to provide for my family needs.

Hardship:

It was after 1993 where the family fortunes plummeted and they were unable to pay for my high school. Luckily my mother was able to get some bursary from the district bursary committee, enabling me to afford my first year of the four years of high school. In 1995 my parents were totally unable to pay for my school fees for second year of high school. My dad then decided that I should drop out of school to start selling bread in Naivasha town. I started hawking bread in Naivasha Town by carrying over 8 crates of bread on my bicycle. The job involved getting orders from shopkeepers and then delivering the bread to their premises between 6 am-11 am in the morning every day.

I hawked bread for a year and in 1996 went to my grandma’s place in Kitale (about 300 kilometers from Naivasha town) to do farming and business activities.

At Kitale, my grandma gave me a piece of land where I started planting coffee, maize and beans. On the sides I was running a small kiosk selling fast moving consumer goods (such as bread, sugar, tea leaves, cooking flour, cooking fat) among others.

How I overcame the Hardship:

I continued this up to 1998 when my uncle advised me to try and get back to school so that I could complete my high school. Sometimes later I approached M.r. Luka Mulika (deceased) the headmaster of newly formed Kiungani Academy.

My request was to be admitted at this school since I had dropped out of school in another town awhile back and wanted to finalize my studies. I requested to be admitted based on my potential as a hardworking and bright student. The headmaster gave the chance and I became a student of Kiungani Academy in 1999. I was unable to pay the fees and approached him to allow me to be working during the weekends and holidays and the money to be raised would go towards paying for my school fees. I was later to emerge the best student in that school after sitting my national examination in 1999.

Since to 2004, the following are the place worked and positions held:

Grace Mission International- Support Staff

CFC Life-Marketing Executive

Family Bank-Marketing & Research Officer

Faulu Kenya-Marketing Manager

Silverdine Medical Centre- Marketing Manager

Sensations-Brand Assistant Manager

Currently: Founder-Morning Health & Beauty

Hobbies:

My hobbies are: Farming activities, volunteering at Sunday school, Playing piano, listening to music

I am the founder of Morning Health & Beauty which was registered in 2014 as a sole proprietorship. The startup is involved in cosmetics formulations, packaging and marketing of beauty solutions. I run the business operations with my wife.

In the year 2006, I developed a desire to start my own business which would be able to transform peoples lives by making beauty solutions accessible to many people at an affordable cost. I was not able to start the business till 2014 when the business was registered. The knowledge came from products training manual I received from a company in UK. I was trained on how to make various products that meets the set customer standards for quality and appeal

Brand: Currently we are manufacturing the products under family branding framework with the adopted brand name Amilanda

Products: Our products portfolio includes lotions, creams, liquid soap, fabric softener, glycerin, body butters and bleach: Amilanda Ultra Quench Lotion, Amilanda Ultra Quench Cream, Amilanda Glycerin, Amilanda Fabric Softener, Amilanda Liquid Soap, Amilanda Beeswax Body Butter, Amilanda Bleach.

Manufacturing: We manufacture the products from home under all the Good Manufacturing practices of cosmetic. The equipment are simple in nature since the batch sizes are rather minimal nut hope to buy equipment in future to expand the manufacturing capacity which currently stands at maximum of 10 liters of products per batch.

Marketing: The target market is low and lower middle income earners with our market targeted at women looking for affordable and high quality beauty and sanitation products. I normally sell the products at markets, shops and residential homes.

Costs: The typical costs for the business are:

1. Cosmetics Ingredients such as surfactants, thickeners, moisturizers, rheology modifiers, oils, fragrances etc

2. Packaging & Branding materials: HDPE& LDPE bottles, printing of stickers

3. Transportation-Transport from Home to market

Revenue: The revenue is from cosmetic is good: Some products such as liquid soap generate over 300% in net profit per batch

Creams and lotions give over 100% net profits per batch

Fabric Softener and bleach gives over 200% net profits per batch. A portion of the profits is re-invested in business to expand the batch size as well as in R&D .The remaining portion is used to pay domestic bills and consumables

Challenge: One of the challenges of this business is substantial financing

Requesting a loan of 11.USD for purchase of additional cosmetic ingredient namely, liquid soap, fabric softener and disinfectant.

This loan will assist in gradually expanding the business manufacturing capacity.

I expect to make over 66% profit from the products.