Small Business, Big Dreams: A focus on Metal Works
Deo 28, a growing fabricator, had always thought one can only start a business after being employed for over 5 years. He thought one would have saved up enough money to start their own business. Having attained technical skills from vocational studies, deo found employment at one of the fabrication companies in town where he worked for about a year. “The opportunity was not as good as it looked on paper. The working conditions at this work place were poor and so was the pay.” deo observes
In his frustration although deo couldn’t do much, he desperately needed a way out. He says “man has to survive; you don’t just leave a job without a solution”
Then deo met Mzee as he calls him. Mzee was and still is an elderly man who lives in Deo’s community. Mzee owns a couple of fabrication machines that he wasn’t using since he was preoccupied with some other ventures.
He narrates, “I thought to myself, If only these machines were mine! at least I would be able to use them to better my situation. And then I thought what if I rent them from Mzee?”
After a few days of pondering on this issue, deo decided to go talk to Mzee about renting the machines. To his awe Mzee was very receptive and agreed to a simple partnership where Deo would pay him a percentage of the money he made in a week.
This was it for Deo! In his words, I then quit the job at the Fabrication Company and embarked on starting my own workshop. “I was so fired up that I couldn’t wait another day to start the workshop.”
Little did he know that this journey he had started wasn’t for the faint hearted. Deo looked for space where he would set the workshop. He nearly failed to get a place because of the rent costs. It was so hard that the only space he got that was available and affordable to him was a portion of open space at a nearby motor garage.
He recalls; “I was offered the place at 50,000 Ugshs and it was my last option I had to take it. I put up at temporary structure using mabati and I determined to start come what may.” Behold on 12th Feb 2012, I officially opened the workshop for business. I then waited for clients to come through but none did.
For the first few months that was same ordeal each day. There were no clients. If it wasn’t for the garage next to him that gave him a couple of small car welding fixing jobs; once or twice a week, he would have never had the money to pay Mzee’s machine hire fees. If he made any money in the first year, he gave it all to Mzee, for machine hire.
“These times were very trying that I regretted quitting employment. If only I had stayed at work. I wondered. I used to be at the workshop by 8am and go away at 5pm without business, it was really a struggle.” he recalls.
But it’s not all bad news, by the second year the business had picked up and he started getting some clients, which clients have kept growing and now he has work every day.
As he narrates, “Currently I leave the workshop passed 6pm because am working on clients’ orders. I have had to get 2 more people to help me, because I cannot do all the stages alone anymore, the work is a lot. It’s easy to cut, set, assemble and then finish, alone when you have one order; but now I have more than three orders a day so I need help.”
We all purpose to be at the workshop by 8am so that we can start early and have a considerable amount of work finished by close of day which is either 5:30pm or 6pm. Though most cases the work we can do is determined by the kind of order we have: like beds take 3 days, windows a week or two, among other things, we do almost all metal works doors, beds, windows, metal safes, gates, doors etc
He also says the prices for different orders vary according to specific design, type of metal material used, finishing desired by the client among other things; but his cheapest product is 50,000 Ugshs (though small fixes are like 10,000) and the job can cost even to over a million depending on what the client wants.
Although it may seem like his business has grown, has clients and more employees; Deo still has challenges. He at times buys material and it turns out they are fake. In this scenario, he loses time and money, because he has to re buy material and re-do the work afresh.
Apart from the machines he has hired from Mzee, and afew hand tools he has bought he doesn’t have all that appropriate machines to deliver some client jobs. At times he has to hire from other workshops yet they too need to use these machines all the time, they can’t lend them to him every time he needs them. He results in him losing business sometimes.
When he has a field job (going to people’s homes to do work), getting the movable machines is a challenge. He in the end gives up the orders to other workshops.
The struggle is still real yet he stay hopeful he will make it.
Four years later, he has orders coming in every day from no order a day, he employs two other young men and makes an average of about 15,000 a day or even more on a really good day. By January this year, he accumulated savings enough to venture into farming with a friend.
Deo says that even Mzee has seen the light and he has decided to join him as a full business partner. “He comes by every weekend and we work together” he says,
He says as he gazes in the sky, I know it’s not where I dream of being. Am on my way and I will make it because every day am encouraged by how much I can do with this precious skill set I have.
When asked about entering employment gain, he laughs and responses “I don’t think I will be going back.”
Story written by Grace Joyce Kemigisa. She interviewed Keuber Deogratitus from Kenbros Metal Crafts in Mutungo. Should you need to support his business, please contact us for more details.
