Former banker’s beauty products distribution gamble pays off

Lucy Wangaw, a former banker, would have been pleased if she had been hired, but she was not.

“I’d look at my bosses who’d been in the banking industry for 15 years and it was scary to imagine I’d be in it for that long,” she says.

She did not feel completely comfortable in her work. In 2017, she resigned.

While still a bank employee, she started selling FMCG on the Jumia app, a business she started with Sh100,000.

She later registered a distribution company for Kim-Fay products. Then luck struck and Nigerian investor Oke Maduewesi, founder of Zaron Cosmetics, came looking for Kenyan distributors.

Lucy Wangaw is the founder of Zaron Kenya Limited. file image | Jeff Angott | NMG

“I signed the contract but the challenge was saving money to bring the shipment,” she says.

“I realized I could take risks because I was still young. So I quit my banking job.”

Aside from the daring, I had one challenge.

“I had the contract, but I needed to grow and sell a lot more and convince them that I had the financial strength and ability to be their sole distributor in Kenya,” says the 34-year-old Bachelor of Economics graduate from the University of Nairobi.

She approached her family and collected about 1.4 million shillings for shipment on her first shipment.

In the first month of business, you didn’t sell a single thing.

product samples

After a few months, I started meeting beauty store owners, sharing product samples, and was able to sign more clients through referrals.

“In the first year, I had cash flow problems and couldn’t bring in more shipments. I probably would have sold more than I sold,” says the founder of Zaron Kenya Limited.

Ms. Wangaw says the company has grown from a monthly turnover of Sh400,000 six years ago to more than Sh14 million today.

Although flooding the beauty products market made her compelled to break through, she says, women, who are her main customers, are self-care minded, and staying young is the secret to her growth. It now has 20 employees.

“I didn’t have a huge workforce, and minimal costs allowed me to recoup profits,” she explains, adding that with discipline, even with no business tracking systems, and revenue stream, you struggle less with warehousing.

overcome obstacles

On her journey, the entrepreneur says, the challenges have been many, and at the top of the list is access to credit when you don’t have security.

As its business grows, other challenges abound—compliance, registration, resource and inventory management, expansion systems, and stability.

Another hurdle is the lack of mentors.

“I’ve reached out to people who I imagine would help but are too busy even though they want to,” she says.

Business support groups help.

“I was shutting down to focus on raising my kids, but I joined Capacity Building at Sandbox, where I learned that the entrepreneurial journey is not rosy,” she says.

One of her biggest learning points is to position yourself as a leader and to inspire your team.

“It boils down to how you present yourself in conversation, how you look. I probably would never have sold a makeup product if I went to my clients and I didn’t sell it a certain way,” she says.

“Be aware of your pain points and find solutions, whether they are painful or easy.”

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