Made in Nigeria

The Spark | Ignite / Connect / Achieve
www.thesparkng.com
of financial resources, like getting an
office when it was really needed.
To back this up, the interior design
enthusiast, and now expert/entrepreneur,
says the company is focusing on
expansion. “We are going into construction
and collaborating with brands
in that industry. This means that in
another five years, we are going to have
a construction arm of the company. We
are also looking into real estate.”
The idea is to be “one of the top three
interior design companies in Africa.
Honestly, I love the way we are growing.”
Selling The Nigerian Story
Understanding what you want
to do is ultimate – more important
than money
This is tricky, especially for the interior
design industry, but Morenike says
collaborations with local manufacturers
and artisans helps to tell the world that
something good can actually come out
of Nigeria – no brooding when negative
stories need to be retold and no
strict preference for ‘Made in China’.
Naming And Branding
Did you know trees symbolised abstract
qualities? Guess you didn’t. We
hardly knew too. With excitement that
she’s telling us something relatively
new, she says, “Oak stands for stability,
endurance, success; it is a beautiful tree
and the national tree for many countries
in the world. So, because we knew
we were going to serve the world we
picked that. The Teak tree also stands
for endurance. Sustainability, success,
endurance is a big deal for us. This adds
to the fact that my best colour is brown
and I love trees.”
It only gets interesting at this point.
Standing Out
These days, you cannot make it if you
cannot take it by the horn. You need to
do it differently. You need to be intentional
with what you are giving out. For
Oak and Teak, ‘excellence is the driver’.
Morenike says, “You can only distinguish
yourself in this industry with the
level of attention you pay to details.
The other thing that makes us unique is
customer
service –
we try to
manage
every
situation.
We have
done over
80 projects
and
recorded
a 95%
success
rate in all of them.”
Without doubt, the design process at
Oak and Teak is simple and smooth.
Challenges
You can only get better with challenges.
Learn from them. Move on to a
higher ground. We don’t know if Oak
and Teak has other challenges it battles
every other day, but Morenike tells us
unusual ineffective communication
and unskilled labourers have being her
greatest challenges.
“I, sometimes, joke with my team,
telling them that I can’t wait till the
time when we work with only robots.
Because we presently work with people
that have different temperaments,
ideologies, so communicating ideas to
them is usually tasking. If anything is
going to go wrong, it comes from the
artisans or lack of effective communication.
Once communication is on point,
we hardly have challenges, really.”
Giving Back
“Interestingly, we organise an annual
program for interior designers that
have started or are about to start and
want to scale. This has run for three
years and it is free; hosting over 200
participants.”
Most Exciting Project
When you have run over 80 projects,
you might have lost track of which one
ended excitingly. What’s the yardstick
for quantifying? It’s not as easy as
saying my best day at the University
was when I escaped graduating with a
pass. Well, for the Creative Director of
Oak and Teak, it is “our first job. Months
after we started, I was just studying and
garnering ideas. Then we got a client
that asked us to do one bedroom but
the client’s daughter asked us to do the
entire house – from a brief of one master
bedroom to a whole house. I got to
know too that I was pregnant and so,
all of those emotions came together to
something I would never forget.”
For Startups
“Understanding what you want to do is
ultimate – more important than money.
When we first started, we had challenges
getting customers but we kept at it.
There are some businesses where you
get your customers right on the first
day but this is different. Also, when you
start, be consistent.”
20
fli @thesparkng