By Prudence Minayo
Easter Kojwang is the founding father of Eastnat, a enterprise she began in August 2015 after being jobless for months. She had moved to Nairobi from Eldoret and bought employed by two corporations in a interval of 4 months. She give up her first job and realized employment was not for her when she took up one other job. She began her enterprise with Sh9,000 as capital and it has grown to be a giant enterprise that delivers honey value tens of millions of shillings to varied companies.
Right here is her story as instructed by WoK.
Training and Enterprise whereas in Faculty
Easter had at all times been enterprise oriented. She offered smokies whereas she was nonetheless in campus. The businesswoman pursued Tourism and Hospitality Administration at Moi College. She would promote smokies within the night and managed to make at the least Sh1000 a day. The entrepreneur expanded her enterprise by getting a spot nearer to the lecture halls the place she started promoting juice, smokies, smokie canine, pilau, chapati and the likes. Her clients have been her fellow college students and lecturers.
Opening Savannah Meals
After campus, she opened a small eatery referred to as Savannah the place she continued to promote meals. Nonetheless, her meals was thought-about a bit expensive by some who most popular to purchase from the road distributors. Inside a brief interval, her enterprise got here tumbling down. This pressured her to shut store and transfer to Nairobi earlier than going to stick with her grandmother within the village.
Beginning a peanut butter enterprise and founding Eastnat
Whereas within the village, she was despatched to reap peanuts and that is the place the concept to begin a peanut butter enterprise was conceived. Throughout this time, she had depleted her financial savings and was left with solely Sh9,000.
Easter Kojwang knew easy methods to make peanut butter however had by no means made it in massive scale earlier than. This didn’t deter her and shortly she made the product and took it to Nairobi. She marketed it in Operation Free Pot Stomach, a Fb group she was a member of. The merchandise offered out inside a brief time-encouraging her to make extra.
Clients then started to ask if she was promoting anything, like honey and she or he remembered her dream in campus had been to promote honey. It was impressed when she as soon as purchased 5 litres of honey from a farmer. All her buddies wished it and when she ran out, she couldn’t discover the farmer once more. She appeared for him with out success and she or he realized that honey was a really marketable product.
Throughout certainly one of her peanut butter deliveries, she met vendor promoting honey and acquired ten kilograms. The individual was a stranger but she was given the honey on credit score. Inside two days, she offered all of it and went again for 30 kg which offered out in per week. That was how she saved on increasing and at present she provides 1000’s to each people and establishments. It took her a yr’s value of gross sales to avoid wasting sufficient cash for an excellent location. In the course of the yr, she simply hawked her merchandise elsewhere and generally she would meet individuals at hen inn to offer them merchandise.
Progress
The corporate has grown to incorporate different merchandise other than honey and peanut butter. They promote quite a lot of entire meals together with sea moss, propolis, charcoal masks and activated charcoal. She believes her enterprise is a one cease store for wholesome meals. In a earlier YouTube interview with Ken’s Cash Issues, she revealed that they’d merchandise to assist with pores and skin, digestive, joint, hormonal points and to spice up immunity.
By the point of the interview, she had delivered orders value a bit over Sh2 million to explicit establishments. Her very first large order was value Sh1.2 million and on the time she had by no means delivered that a lot honey. This didn’t stop her from rising to the event.
Easter Kojwang is working to develop her model to some extent the place she has outlets throughout the capital and could be present in main retailers.
Supply: whownskenya.com
