By Glory Ugochukwu
Ebele Udoh is an award winning entrepreneur, Founder & Managing Director- African Designers Mall (ADM). She founded African Designers Mall in 2016 where women made-in-Africa merchandise are accessible across the globe.
Ebele is an Economist from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. She holds an IT sales expert certification in CISO/ IBM /HP. She is a people-centric leader who believes in motivating her colleagues to have confidence in their value as individuals, operate in a no comfort zone.
Apart from being the #1 online mall for African designers and partnering with the biggest cognac house in the world- Martell for launch in Nigeria, she has also launched ADM brand in Ghana in partnership with Swarovski – A luxury and global brand.
Ebele’s leadership abilities and focus have earned her recognition in Africa and recently became the first and youngest Ambassador for Africa’s biggest trade show- Origin Africa. She enjoys mentoring young entrepreneurs and strongly promotes the African fashion movement which has birthed ADM fashion pop-ups across the continent.
Ebele Founded Brand Box Africa in 2019, a Tech company that develops impactful digital solutions at the intersection of Art, Design and Technology. Her goal is to help businesses drive using digital solutions and also deliver amazing experiences that make people talk and build strategic value for brands, tech, entertainment, arts and culture in the most creative way.
BrandBox Africa is about to disrupt the way small businesses retail online in Africa by developing automated digital homes for businesses which in turn spikes their sales and customer base.
She gives back to the community through her NGO called My Africa Project. Here, she works with action-driven youths to cause change through one project at a time in their direct environment.
Given her rich profile which seeks to inspire women find their feet in a very competitive world and her business tips which is capable of making many women less dependent on men our reporter sought her out. In this chat she shares her experience on how to get it right as she makes our Echo woman for the week.
What was your motivation when you started your business?
I always knew that I would work for myself even while I worked for a tech company in my early career. The birth of my first company, African Designers Mall (ADM) was motivated based on the struggles my friends and I faced when we tried to shop for made in Nigeria brands and other African brands from African countries but found it so difficult to do so.
What motivated my second company Brand Box Africa was from a personal experience and frustrations I encountered with developers while building my e-commerce company ADM. It was tears, torment, failed expectations and not meeting set timelines. I wanted this company to deliver easy and fast solutions for customers who needed to reach out to new customers and grow their business on a global stage with low cost of production. So there you go, I made a decision to change that experience into a solution in order to make sure that other entrepreneurs wouldn’t have to go through what I did.
What were your ups and downs when you started the business?
Oh! When I started ADM, Nigeria wasn’t quite ready for e-commerce and African designers were reluctant about selling online. Brick and mortar was the order of the day. I also struggled with finishing and details of their products. In 2017, I shut down my business for over 8 months to re-structure it into what it is now. This doesn’t mean that we are not faced with challenges but we have found ways to handle them better while still learning and improving our processes and structure.
What would you say guarantees business success?
I would say effective strategy and of course backed up with funds and a great team.
Can you share with us the most common mistakes made by people when it comes to starting a profitable business?
8 out of 10 businesses fail within the first 18 months. That’s a shocking number, isn’t it? And after being in business for years now, I can see why that statistic is true; there is a lot more to entrepreneurship than creating your own work hours, being your own boss, and following your dream. I learned the hardest, mostly costly decisions within my first year, so I can share some of the most common mistakes small business owners make
1. A good team is key to business success. You cannot do it all by yourself, you will burn out.
2. Startups forget to identify their target market even before designing their product or service.
3. Start ups strive to do everything and appeal to everyone. But you cannot serve everyone. You have to niche down.
4. Undervaluing yourself: While providing a quality service, benefiting others, and working for the greater good might be at the heart of your business, your business can’t run without money. You can’t take your business full-time without making a solid income. You can’t pay your business expenses without money.
You can’t support your family or your employees without money. Passion is great, but money is what keeps a business running. So in order to beat that one-year statistic, you have to make decisions with this in mind.
5. You must have a solid business plan
6. Small business owners fail to create a workflow
What are the essential tools a small business owner should know?
Here are some tools I use to run my business
1. Drop box: Customer experience is important. Rather than sending bulk emails with attachments that tend to get lost, we organize a drop box folder to share files and even within my team members.
2. Canva : For graphic designs we have been using Canva more and more to create easy-to-edit templates.
3. Trello: This is a management tool we use to organize projects and to-do lists at specific timelines. This allows us to assign tasks, create due dates and more
4. Google Drive: With the Google drive, we can access documents and files on-the-go
5. Mail chimp: We use this for email marketing purposes and building a community
What should business owners do at the embryonic stage to remain afloat?
For many people who want to start their own business, the hardest part is knowing exactly where to start. Especially when there is so much to do and so much contradictory advice.
This often leads new business owners to waste vast amounts of time, energy and resources on the wrong activities. As a result, they often lose motivation and give up before their business gets started; at the early stages of a business I believe you should focus on these;
1. Commitment: There is the day you decide you want to start a business, and then there is the day you decide to commit to and run your business like a business.
2. Clarity: You need to know exactly why you are starting your business, why it’s important to you and what you want it to do for you. It also helps to know who you are going to help and what impact you want to have
3. Self belief: When you start anything new, you don’t know if you are going to succeed or not, so you need a certain amount of faith in your ability to step out there and figure things out. Many people will tell you that you are mad or it can’t be done, so you need to have enough self-belief to put their helpful advice to one side, feel the fear and do it anyway!
4. Passion: Starting your own business is not an easy option. There will be days, sometimes weeks, when things don’t go according to plan, when people you trust let you down, and when you find yourself coming up against brick wall after brick wall. You will only get through these times and come out the other side stronger if you have a deep passion for what you do.
5. A big goal: You need to set yourself a clear goal so that you develop a plan to follow that will consistently take you in the right direction and avoid distraction. This goal needs to be big enough to stretch you (think way beyond what you know you can already do and achieve), but not so big that you dismiss it as impossible.
What marketing ideas can help boost the sales of a small business owner?
These simple marketing tips can be implemented immediately by small businesses
1. Digital Marketing: Engage with your customers and potential customers on social media, use video to create content, use Instagram and Facebook stories, tag vendors and create community with them.
2. Have a website: Add reviews to your website; make sure you have great product photos
3. Email marketing: This method of marketing is very essential. Collect emails addresses of your customers to build your audience
4. Local marketing: Host in-store events where your potential customers go to, attend networking events; sponsor a local event etc
5. Public Relations: Find media opportunities to make your brand known and you can also submit articles to online media companies for publication.
What advice do you have for small business owners out there?
Don’t be afraid to take risks and always trust the process.
