MSME DIGEST With Kola Owolabi
You don’t have to go so far or spend too much money
I told the story before. It was a Nigerian entrepreneur, living abroad and who came to Nigeria to help implement a project for an organization. While we were both working on that project, he brought out a business plan for a pet idea that he had developed abroad. He was thinking that he could work on that idea and turn it into a business in Nigeria. The idea was working abroad where he lived as many people had the business going on there and so thought that the same idea would work in Nigeria. It was a different picture when he showed it to several people in Nigeria, which included prominent business people. They all told him that the business will not work in Nigeria. He was told that things like that could only work in places where things are well organized. He was about giving up on the idea and just decided to show me to hear what I would say on the idea. My answer was a big shock to him because I told him to take it straight to the market. I was the first person to tell him that in Nigeria. I told him that the answer to the question of whether a project or business will work lies in the market and not in the head of any business egghead. You can’t find the answer in the fine office of any top notch consultant either. Nobody knows the idea that will work in any market until the people who the product are targeted at handle the same product, try it and give you their feedback.
Coca-cola had wanted to do a taste/formula change in 1986 based on the result of a huge formula-change campaign which involved 1 million taste tests. The result of the laboratory test showed that consumers wanted a formula change. So the company promptly effected the change in the product and pushed “New Coke” into the market. It met with a huge resistance in the market because the people who are taking it out there are freewill people not under the influence of laboratory conditions and so nobody could predict their reaction until the product is in their hands.
If you check up the story, you will discover that the company executives pulled in the new formula and owned up to failure. The had actually tried to force it on the market due to the strength of the taste test result, but they would have killed the product if they had ignored the feedback coming from the real market.
Coming back to my entrepreneur friend we were working together, he promptly agreed with me to take his idea to the market immediately. The same day, he put up an advert in a prominent Nigerian newspaper advertising the idea that everyone had told him would not work in Nigeria.
By the time the advert came out the following week the result was a big shock. The people and staff that we were working on the other project were the first set of people to react. They brought the newspaper into the office to meet their Oga (they had seen his identity on the advert) and expressed their interest in the service. They all registered for the service and that was how the business shot up from the ground and roared to a successful launch. The guy started a most flourishing business around that idea and the most intriguing of the whole matter is that other people, which included prominent Nigerian businesses started copying it. This was a business that people said would not work in Nigeria.
Kola Owolabi is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of Nigeria. His company, David Solomon Consulting, a foremost business plan preparation/academic writing (Manuscript/Dissertation/Journal and Conf. Papers review and editing) consulting firm, operates out of Igbesa, near Crawford University, Ogun State. He can be reached at 08023203198.
