Determined Malope takes furniture business a notch up
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday July 23, 2018 18:00
From his home in Gaborone, Malope manufactures and repairs sofas, dinning chairs, car roofs, and car seats according to his clientele’s needs.
Having started his career at Chobe Design in 2001 doing upholstery, Malope managed to build and upgrade his skills, something that led to easy employment at different manufacturing shops including Habitant, Abi’s furniture, Noble supplies, Telecoon and Hugo interiors. But then the entrepreneur bug hit, and in 2011, Malope together with his former colleague got funded by government under the youth grant to the tune of P100 000 to start a furniture business.
But, as Malope and partner was to discover, penetrating the market was not easy as it was too competitive and most of their profits were absorbed by their rented warehouse and office.
“We were just a small business trying to penetrate the market which was already captured by big players like Chobe Design and it was not easy. Rent crippled our profits as it was expensive forcing us to close down in 2013,” he said.
A few months later after closing down, the determined Malope decided to continue his passion operating from home repairing people’s sofas, dinning chairs, car seats, car roofing and manufactures.
“Some of my clients were those who were referred by my previous customers. Fortunately my good work helped me to get more recommendations and happy that I am always occupied and does a little of manufacturing,” he said.
Malope uses leather, artificial leather, and cotton depending on his clients’ needs. Currently he gets his material from Morongwa stores, Sismo Manufacturing and other stores around Gaborone. “I prefer my clients to buy material for themselves to avoid having disputes with them. I learnt from our previous business that some clients would come back and complain so I try to avoid that because customer satisfaction is my priority,” he said.
Malope’s clientele is mostly individuals across the country. His future plans is to expand his business and manufacturing, and intends registering with Public Procurement Asset Disposal Board (PPADB) as he wants to start tendering.
“I have plans to also register with EDD, have a trademark because I want to open a shop one day and produce in large scale and hire more youth to help curb unemployment. Right now I have engaged one person because we are operating at home but once we start manufacturing more we would obviously increase our labour force,” he said.