–Nwamaka Okoye, President Stanford Seed Transformation Network
After her Masters degree in the United States of America, her dream was to return to Nigeria to set up an NGO against corruption, but her intuition told her she’s not really qualified to talk on that subject yet. She experimented with furniture making and every piece of furniture she produced became an instant market hit. Today, her joy knows no bounds that she followed her dad’s footsteps in being a furniture maker.
Most recently, Bank and Entrepreneur Africa Magazine in its May edition listed her among the top Nigerian entrepreneurs.
Nwamaka Okoye is a seasoned business personality, Architect and Interior designer. She is the CEO/Managing Director of Housessories Limited, a luxury furniture and lifestyle manufacturing company based in Isolo area of Lagos. Not only that, she’s the President of Stanford Seed Transformation Network, Nigeria chapter. She spoke with Saturday Sun about what you need to succeed in business life, growing up and lifestyle, her organisation and more.
Can you take us down memory lane of how your company became a success story?
I did not start my business with a large capital. Everything you see was just through good starting. Nobody told me come and take this or that money, it was through getting one job, doing it well, putting everything back into another job and doing that well as well. It is not really the way people think it is. When I got this place (her office premises) we started with the ground floor. I remembered being told that it’s too big, but I saw it as being too small. The truth is, you carry your business inside of you. There’s nothing in this world that someone wouldn’t just wake up and dream of, so why can’t you dream of something as well. You can make something happen. When you hear the story of how people started, you will be surprised. I know people that started up selling goods from their car booths now they have five to10 branches. The truth is that you just have to believe in yourself and work really hard and be focused and put the money back inside.
Who influenced your career path, your dad or mum?
My dad actually. My dad had a furniture company, it’s called Ricco furniture, it’s on Ikorodu road. I was in the university and one day, I told him I was broke. He said okay, I should get ready. He took me to the showroom, introduced me to the manager that he has got a new staff for him. So, when I got my first salary, it was my pocket money, so I started working in my dad’s furniture company during long vacation. He trained us not to have a sense of entitlements. Later, it dawned on me that I wanted to be an interior designer and manufacturer of furniture, but there’s nowhere in Nigeria that does interior designing. So I went to University of Nigeria Nsukka to study architecture. After that, I went to US and studied Interior designs. I did my Masters there and I also studied illustration and multimedia, I learnt web and graphic design and I did that for few years in the US. My husband is an architect, we always wanted to come back to Nigeria and give back to the society. Though we started our business in the US called Design Genie. In 2007, I came back home on holiday and I did a furniture job and they wanted more. I did another one, they asked for more and the third time I got another call again. My baby was six months then. I came back. A year later my family came back to Nigeria. A year later, we entered a design competition to do a 12 -storey building and we won the competition after about two years, Housessories was born in 2010. We kick-started as a production line, convenient, stylish, office furniture for brand conscious organization. We set up online, soon after that we got a project with Nigeria Tetra Paks, we did their head office. Then Dunlop, PZ, and after sometime, we set up another line for the luxury builder. Initially, we were doing custom cabinet as a system person, I need something that is sustainable.
What has life taught you as a person?
To be thankful. I believe that you should be true to yourself. There is only one you. Because you are unique you have something to offer and I have something to offer. I believe that God created me for a purpose and I just keyed in into that purpose, not just what everybody else is doing and that gives me true joy. Not for anything else and that is what I have learnt, being true to myself. I also learnt that it’s important to be kind. No matter how rich you think you are, when you die, you have died, even when Princess Diana died, the clock did not stop for one second. So, no matter how important you think you are, time will never stop for you and time is the currency of life, so you have to spend it wisely.
Be true to yourself and have fear in God.
What’s your style like?
I’m not a fashionable person, I’m not into what is in vogue. I prefer to have a strong style and I like to be a bit off the cuff. I like classic things, not interiors, I’m talking about dressing, I don’t like colours. I do wear them, but I’m uncomfortable in them. I like neutrals. Khaki, brown, etc.
How do you unwind?
I don’t sleep during the day. I love being alone. My husband calls me Socrates, what are you now thinking, about he says. I like to write, I used to like to read, but now I read more about entrepreneurship articles and love spending time with my children.
Can you enlighten us about Stanford Seed Transformation Network?
It is a network of cohorts that have attended the Stanford Seed program. The program is being set up by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. It started by a grant from a couple who donated 150 million dollars to Stanford University for the purpose of alleviating poverty. To do that, they decided that it’s better to find entrepreneurs in developed economies that have set up a skill already, find out what their plans are, take them through a program, give them enabling environment and help them to succeed. We started with a six- month program, we now moved to one-year program. We have coaches that will work with you throughout the period. During the program, we have professors from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, they fly into Ghana to train and teach on practical aspects of business and after they are done with that, they come up with the transformation plan. When they are done with the program, there is also additional support. But, before you can get that, you have to become part of the network. The network gives you access to the offering that the Stanford seed provides, of which one of them is- have access to coaches who will work with you, enable you as a leader to grow bigger, more so, you have access to finance. Not that they give you the money, they invite investors to look at your business and see where they can help. These are the support that you need. Also, as a network member, one of the things you benefit is what we call Tactical workshop. The workshop is done quarterly. We take a topic that is important and relevant to us, the one we did earlier we talked about ‘Digital strategy in marketing’. Sometimes we opened that up to the public. We have also had ‘Bank strategies and management’. We have professionals come to talk to us. We also have something like ‘My story so far’. In that, we have one of our peers or sometimes someone who has gone ahead of us to come and talk to us about their finance journey. Not to tell us how great it is, but the highs and the lows. So, from that candid conversation we can learn, so that we don’t make the same mistakes. The network is a very powerful network, we just turned one year. We have the Nigeria chapter, Ghana chapter and Ivory Coast chapter, South Africa, Libya, obviously, it’s a global network. This November we are going to Burkina Faso on the invitation of the President. It’s like a trade mission. We are going to look at the opportunities. Being part of the network affords you a lot of things. It becomes easier for you to break into other countries. Help you with the support that you need, so that you can sail. If we sail, we are alleviating poverty because we are empowering people.
We have eight different cohort groups in the network and we have 60 cohorts. We have people in different sectors: manufacturing, technology, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, medicals, systemtec, Bellanaija, Mtec, Nordica, Sofresh, Just Right Pharmaceuticals… it’s a very wide range.
What’s the criteria for becoming a member of Stanford?
Your revenue should be about 15 million dollars. Poverty is alleviated through SMEs not through Federal Government. In Stanford Seed Network Nigeria, we reach back to the society by doing free training for start-ups every month. We train them the things that we have learnt and it makes it easier for them. You are very much surprised with how much people are willing to help others grow in their business.
The market is big enough. What we learnt from the program is tremendous, if it was not shared with us, where would we be? There’s no way you will say that you achieved what you are by your own effort. Someone has to help you somewhere, someone has to make a phone call for you, someone has to teach you. Our people (Stanford graduates) are generously minded. When the idea of this training came up, we got 22 volunteers, that means for two years we have trainers. It’s just one day, but you can imagine the value or the impact. Even when we talk about my story so far, the kind of story the speakers shared made a great impact. The penultimate month that we had, we didn’t have enough people come and it was a free program, because we want to give free, we even served lunch in addition to that.