Jewellery with a purpose

“I wanted to be a diplomat,” Njuhi, 29, recalls her childhood dream which was fanned by frequently seeing a fancy black Mercedes with a flag in her neighbourhood. But she was also captivated by the political debates that happened whenever her parents had guests over and she ended up in the political science and sociology class at the University of Nairobi.

Here, her interest in politics grew and she ended up vying to be the chairperson of the University of Nairobi Student Union (SONU). Then the 2008 post-election violence happened.

“The student leaders were called out to watch out for the other students and all I could hear from students who came to seek refuge on campus were stories of torture. It was shocking and traumatic but in it, I found my purpose,” she says.

She began thinking of how she could prevent this from happening again and started looking into peace studies. Soon after graduation, she won a scholarship for a peace studies course at the University of Notre Dame in the US with field research in Israel and Palestine. In 2011, she joined the United Nations in New York for the Youth in Africa project. She was tasked with looking for opportunities for young people to be absorbed into companies.

“What caught my eye was how much energy and talent young people were swimming in especially in the arts. I thought that I could use art to push my peace agenda,” she says.

Mixing activism with art

Njuhi’s love for jewellery and fashion goes way back. When she got her first job soon after her undergraduate studies and she would budget for jewellery even before fare. Now, with the idea of combining peace activism and art, jewellery came as a natural choice.

At the start of 2012, her contract with the UN ended and she came back home and founded Riri Jewellery.

The elements are sourced from different cultures and created by artisans from varying economic backgrounds.

“Riri means divine beauty. Having seen how rich the Kenyan culture is, I was sure that it could inspire beautiful jewellery pieces which could define what it means to be African.

I also knew that the violence, suspicion and distrust stemmed from the fact that people were not empowered. My plan was to seek out young people who produced good products and to use my knowledge and experiences to help them showcase their products. My aim is economic empowerment,” she explains her business plan.

Having shopped for jewellery a lot, it was easy for her to single out people making various elements to create jewellery.

Also, brass and the semi-precious stones that she intended to have as raw material were locally available thus starting her business didn’t demand a lot of capital.

Luckily, unlike the US where she’d had to sometimes pay people for their time, she was pleasantly surprised to find that Kenyans wanted to help. In no time, her design team, headed by her sister was producing high quality handmade jewellery. Her first hurdle was having to justify her higher-than-average pricing.

“No matter the pricing, if jewellery is good quality it sells, and thus I resolved early on not to compromise on quality,” she says.

Her lowest moment came when one of her designers whom she relied heavily on left. After this blow that affected the business in a big way, she made a decision to learn all that she could about her business so that everybody else who comes on board just complements her.

“I realised that I am the biggest resource that my business has. If I don’t push for my agenda, who will?” she poses.

The past two years have been transformative for Njuhi and she has succeeded at making high quality African products and pricing them appropriately. Besides Kenya, the UK has been her company’s biggest market. Her dream is to have a presence all over the world.

Unlike her days in employment, the results of her work are now tangible. The more energy she puts in the more she gets from the world. And with it she has been able to create peace in the form of valuing other people’s talents, enabling them and giving them peace of mind and the feeling of being valued and respected.

HOW SHE DID IT:

• In her earlier days, she identified successful women she could shadow and through this learnt about entrepreneurship.
• She knows that there is humility in learning and thus it wasn’t hard for her to admit that there were aspects of design she knew nothing about and partnered with experts in those sectors.
• To start off, she took some time to identify what it was that she did exceptionally better than others.
• She is a Christian and her faith keeps her going. She reckons that one has got to believe in something.