Starting a stall business requires careful planning, a strong understanding of one’s market and a commitment to providing exceptional customer service.

It is perhaps for this reason that a mechanical engineering student at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) invented a unique collapsible structure that vendors can use to display their groceries.

According to Kaguru Njoroge Muchina, the pioneer of the flexible stalls, they are simply made of wood for support and partitioning as well as metal for grills that hold the goods.

“Compared to other grocery kiosks, flexi stalls are more hygienic, presentable structures and are portable thus efficient and reliable for mobile vendors”, he observes.

The pricing of the stalls ranges from Ksh1,500 ($11.6) to Ksh3,500 ($27) for the small and big ones respectively. Muchina says he started this business with a capital of Ksh100,000 ($771) which he acquired from a seed fund in his former school through a programme known as Aspire, which helped him begin the business.

He says this is vision-driven initiative and he is looking forward to more than what he is currently, when he will be financially stable to depend on himself after studies.

Muchina doesn’t have employees and works with fellow students who just volunteer to help him during their free time. He says it began as a project back in school and now it’s becoming a business after consultation with the respective university and Kakamega County authorities.

“Being a new product in the market, there are challenges associated with it. Inasmuch as it is a good and reliable structure, many people have not yet embraced it”, he says. “They are used to their own old ways of using wood and polythene papers and are hesitant to try the new idea.”

He, however, says since the business started, minimal sales have been made though customer response is positive and promising.

Muchina has a way of attracting and maintaining his customers, for those that can’t afford to buy the stalls in cash, he always rents them out at an affordable price depending on the size of the demand.

As if that’s not enough he does deliveries to the respective customers and picks the stalls up after use by the customers. As much as these stalls are flexible, they can’t be carried over for long distances since they are heavy.

“This is a limiting factor as far as transportation is concerned. This also affects marketing because they can’t be carried to further places without money,” he adds.

However, Muchina has developed a marketing strategy where he takes pictures of the stall, prints them and uses them for advertising and marketing his business.

Inasmuch as he has a way of doing it, it’s not that effective because many people would want to see the real structure and know how exactly it functions, other than being told theory about it.

Among other issues such as lack of electricity, inadequate funds, inadequate manpower, expensive cost of raw materials and the fact that he is a student are the major limitations as of now. He said that being a part time business person and managing academics is not very hard for now because the business is still developing.

Moreover, he says he puts more time and focus on studies and only attends to his business when he is not held up with school work. Muchina says he has a vision for his business and he is looking forward to establishing and expanding the business.

Despite the above challenges he keeps pressing on believing everything will fall in place with time and he will have a successful business.

• Tell / KNA report / By Gloria Asasha

A mechanical engineering student at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) Kaguru Njoroge Muchina (Centre) displays and markets his flexi stall to grocery vendors in Kakamega town. Photo by Gloria Asacha.