Business cooked in the kitchen

Thiitu Karega personifies the term cottage industry. Her kitchen is her workplace. Thiitu, 33, is the founder of Binti Naturals, a beauty company that specialises in natural hair products.

She manufactures products in her kitchen, and stores them in a clear plastic box that sits in a corner of her living room. Her clients order through her social media channels.

 “I manufacture under the brand Binti Naturals,” says Thiitu as we settle down for this interview at her home in Ngumo Estate, Nairobi. “I have been doing it for four and a half years, but fulltime since January 2016,” she says.

When did she start the business? 

Thiitu had been a banker for eight years. “I graduated from USIU with a Bachelors degree in International Relations and Management in October 2007. A year later, I joined a local bank as a graduate clerk,” she says.

Thiitu loved her job but the routine of the workplace bored her stiff. “I’m not a rule-breaker but I felt like I’d been put in a little peg and told to stick within the boundaries. My aunt saw me two months into the job and said I didn’t look happy. She told me it was okay to consider leaving for the sake of my happiness.

That same week, Thiitu was fortunate to get a phone call from a different bank offering her a similar position. The transition was seamless. Thiitu thrived in her career as a banker. She was versatile and adaptive;  she was recognised and rewarded for her work, even earning a promotion to the management level.

However, in early 2014, industry shakeups and change of internal policy made Thiitu apprehensive about her future as a banker. “There was a general feeling of discontent at the office,” she says. “In that melee, I sat down and had an honest conversation with myself, ‘What am I doing for me in the next few years? What do I have to show for the eight years I’d been giving my time and energy?”

She immediately started thinking of a way out. Thiitu had been rocking her natural hair since 2008. “I had cut my textured hair because it was damaged, weak and was falling off,” she says. “I always wore my combed-out natural afro to work. I’d accessorise it with ribbons and coloured scarves. Back then, there was very little information online about how to care for natural hair. I had this tub of raw shea butter that my sister in the States had sent me. It was a generic brand and had a nasty smell. I’d mix it with coconut oil or olive oil and apply it on my hair.”

She says the concoction made her hair so happy! It started to grow.

“My friend Eva is the one that suggested I sell the product and do it as a business full time.”

It was mid-2014 when Thiitu  decided to turn her concoction into a sellable product. She’d mix it to different quantities for each ingredient and come up with a different formulation.

“I tried it on my hair then gave away samples to my mum and friends. Some of my friends didn’t even use them,” she says laughing. “Others would complain about the smell, how it worked on their hair and the greasiness. I’d go back to the kitchen to mix stuff again. The process was very rudimentary,” says the  entrepreneur.

Thiitu would pack her products into clear plastic containers she’d bought from the supermarket. “It was difficult getting good containers for packaging cosmetics. I later got a contact in China and printed the labels at home.”

After concentrating on shea butter from West Africa, Thiitu finally settled on the one from Uganda because it had a gentler smell, was softer and had the consistent colour of pale tea. “I also liked that it was organically certified and I could trace the farm where it was grown. A friend imported three litres for me. One litre back then cost Sh300.”

To mask the pungent smell of the shea butter, Thiitu would add essential oils – vanilla, tea tree and peppermint – to her concoction. “The essential oils sold here were expensive; 10ml cost Sh2,000. I travelled to India in mid 2015 and abought 50ml for Sh1,000,” she says.

She returned to Kenya with enough stock. She bought a hand-mixer and returned to the kitchen to prepare her concoctions with revised grammages and new ingredients. Her trade secrets were all in her head, her trial formulations were not written down anywhere; she relied on her memory and sense of smell to guide her.

“I finally cracked the selling formulation towards the end of 2015!” says Thiitu. “The hype of natural hair had picked up in Nairobi by that time. I quit my job in January 2016 then started selling my product.”

Thiitu pushed her product mostly through marketing events and trade fairs. “I attended about four every month in 2016. I’d sell 100 units of product on a good month. On a slow month, 10.”

Thiitu manufactures and sells five products ; Classic hair and body butter (at Sh600); Scented shea butter, it comes in a variety of six scents (between Sh500 and Sh1,000); Beard and face butter for men (Sh1,000); Whipped shea butter (Sh400); and Hot oil treatment (Sh500).

 “I want to move manufacturing out of my kitchen to a workshop space I’ve been offered on Thika Road. I will need machines – mixers, kettles, packaging equipment and labelling equipment. I’ve had offers for grants and funding but I really want to finance it myself. I’ll liquidate my savings and set aside some money from my sales.”

 “There is no glamour in entrepreneurship,” she says. “Being in business is hard. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” She chuckles. “I have more patience than I thought I had. I’ve also learnt to accept that things don’t have to be perfect.”