The founder/CEO of Ample Foods, Mrs. Aisha Ime-James, has carved a niche for herself in the business of blending herbs and spices to meet individual dietary and health needs. From hawking Moi-Moi on the streets of Lagos, the marketing and media practitioner with over 20 years practice has transformed into a processor/manufacturer. She has leveraged online presence and logistics firms to reach her growing clientele with quality lifestyle healthy foods. The budding entrepreneur’s inspiring rise to fame and fortune is a study in doggedness and creativity. Assistant Editor CHIKODI OKEREOCHA reports.
One of her life’s principles is to keep evolving. And by sticking religiously to this time-tasted principle, Mrs. Aisha Ime-James has evolved from just selling bean pudding, more popularly called Moi-Moi, from canopies on the streets of Adeniyi Jones, Ikeja, Lagos, to being the founder/CEO of Ample Foods, a preferred hub for the procurement of locally-grown, rich and quality staple foods.
Ample Foods, which specialises in blending herbs and spices to meet individual dietary and health needs, has four of its products registered by the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). They are Eggshell powder (a natural calcium alternative), Activated charcoal (used to combat food poisoning), Tigernuts mix (also known as Kunu Aya), and Cayenne mix spice.
Other products on the stable of Ample Foods include Tumericplus (a spice combination of cinnamon, turmeric, ginger & black pepper), Tamarind seed powder (caffeine free coffee), Tamarind fruit & seed powder, Dates powder, Baobab fruit powder, Kuka 4 in 1 pack soup (contains spices, catfish and crayfish powder; all individually packed), and Baobab milk drink, among others.
But, it is not so much the company’s products, which have become the toast of customers in search of natural, nutritious and quality staple foods that meet their individual dietary and health needs that stand Ample Foods out. Rather, it is the rich and inspiring story of how a mere catering services outfit focussed on selling Moi-Moi on the streets evolved into a start-up food value-chain.
It all started few years ago when Aisha, in line with her principle of constantly evolving, decided to introduce variants of the Moi-Moi she was selling to her numerous customers. Unlike the regular Moi-Moi, she came up with Moi-Moi that had low salt, low oil, and low pepper, for instance. She also took the innovation a notch higher, infusing herbs and spices into the Moi-Moi she sold to her customers.
“I spiced the Moi-Moi with turmeric and herbs that will help break down metabolism,” the start-up strategist, entrepreneurship coach and mentor told The Nation, noting, however, that she had always loved food, herbs and spices. “I have always loved Moi-Moi business. I could eat a bowl of Moi-Moi. I could eat 10 raps at a go. In fact, my sisters and I are into herbs and spices as hobby,” Aisha said.
According to her, she was selling the spices and herbs at the corners where she initially had her store and people were ordering and she was supplying. “So, I decided to infuse the hobby into the business,” she said, pointing out: “One thing about life is that you don’t stop, just keep evolving and moving. You will be shocked where it will take you.”
For Aisha, who holds an Ordinary National Diploma (OND), a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Marketing from Federal Polytechnic Bida; a Post-graduate Diploma (PGD) in Management from the University of Calabar; and a Professional Diploma in Marketing from National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria, it was a case of turning her love for food, spices and herbs into a money-making business venture.
Her natural inclination to evolve must have been why the consummate marketing and media practitioner, with over 20 years’ practice in print, electronic and New Media, branding, advertising and marketing, has been able to transform into one of Nigeria’s most sought-after processors/manufacturers, with Ample Foods’ range of lifestyle healthy food products dominating the market.
Before starting Ample Foods in 2015, Aisha had to stop the business she was doing as a media marketing integration and event service provider. She got fed up after clients started giving different excuses for not paying for services rendered.
“I had a bad experience of people owing and not wanting to pay, giving excuses when you have delivered. I do event creation; I am a creative director. I can create events; conceptualise events and source for them. But, when you do that for people and they just find one excuse or the other not to pay your fee at the end of the day, which was a bit discouraging after working in the media and now trying to start mine,” she narrated.
However, her bad experience only served to turn Aisha into a study in doggedness and resourcefulness. The former On-Air Personality (OAP) with Voice of Nigeria (VON) and former head of Marketing at Superscreen Television wasted no time in floating Ample Foods, first as a catering business, and also opened a shop for it.
But, unfortunately, the shop failed. Her words: “I realised that people are too busy to enter stores. So, at the end of the day, I reasoned to myself that what is the essence of paying shop rent and huge bills if people don’t come in. I had to stop the business and thought of what to do next. I went ahead and started my passion, which is food.
“My sister and I had always nurtured the idea of having a Moi-Moi corner where people, working class mothers and people generally can get healthy Moi-Moi.”
But this time, Aisha had to do away with the idea of keeping a shop. “I shut the store, went to the streets of Adeniyi Jones, looked for two points, set up canopies and started selling Moi-Moi,” she explained.
The Trainer and Publicity Secretary of Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA’s) Network of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW) ran the business from canopies before she finally stopped selling Moi-Moi on the streets. By then, creativity, innovation and, of course, her natural knack to keep evolving and moving had set in. She started taking orders from customers from far and wide.
It was also at this point that Aisha introduced variants of Moi-Moi and also infused spices and herbs in her offering. She said some years back, she and her sister had planned to go to the Nigerian Agency for Natural Medicine to study more on herbs, but kept procrastinating.
“But, somehow, God has a way of ordering once step. I kept at my food, my spices, my catering, but I discovered I am more passionate when it comes to the herbal part of it than the catering part of it,” she recalled.
Eventually, she decided to follow her passion and the step God ordered for her. I stopped the Moi-Moi business. I was no longer getting the excitement I thought I would get. More so, because it was on street corner and it became a bit challenging using a street corner,” she told The Nation. Besides, foreigners who own the place she was using left Nigeria so she had to move.
Turning to online presence, logistics firms
With Aisha’s marketing background, pushing Ample Foods’ products into the market has almost been a walk in the pack. Although she no longer has a physical store, the Naturopath and recycler of biodegradable agricultural waste into edibles took advantage of on-line presence such as Facebook and WhatsApp, as well as logistics firms to reach her customers.
Aisha doesn’t have a factory either. Her only physical presence is her operational base in Technology Incubator Centre (TIC) on Oba Ogunji Road, Pen Cinema, Agege, Lagos. Instead of running a factory, she uses existing factories where she books time and go to do her production, package and take her finished products home and deliver to customers.
“I don’t have a factory, I don’t have equipment. I do outsourcing. I outsource what I can outsource; you don’t kill yourself wanting to do everything. That’s why we don’t grow in this country. Let people specialise in different areas,” she said, noting: “Most factories are idle; it’s just like a fad. People want to own their own factories, but they are under-utilised.”
Justifying this model further, the frontline industrialist said: “We all can’t be opening up factories everywhere. It doesn’t make economic sense. It doesn’t make environmental sense because the pollution rate will be high. We have to be conscious of our environment.” According to her, she even started selling off some of the equipment she bought, which she never used.
Another innovative strategy is her use of logistics firms. “They (logistics companies) do all the movements for me, the leg work,” she said, noting that this was why she was still producing, moving and selling during the COVID-19 lockdown. “I didn’t even feel the impact of the COVID-19,” she confessed.
Narrating why the use of logistics firms became imperative, Aisha said when she started the Moi-Moi business about six years ago, it was challenging because she had to deliver as far as Ajah. “We didn’t have all these logistics companies like we have today. I use to call my son and his friends and the neighbuorhood boys, give them money to enter bus and do deliveries for me,” she said.
But, at a point, it became problematic because she had hundreds of raps of Moi-Moi to send to different places like the airport, Ikoyi, Lekki and Ajah. “I was having hypertension because sometimes the boys will not come back sometimes until 10 pm. I remember a client was very angry that her delivery came at 8’oclock; she ranted that she wasn’t going to collect it,” she recalled.
However, Aisha refused to be discouraged. She ceased the opportunity of the now ubiquitous logistics firms. “The moment that thing (logistics companies) started, I latched on it and it has skyrocketed my performance. I use them more. I do less moving about and save more time,” she said in a triumphant tone.
Apart from leveraging technology and logistics firms to support her business, Aisha also said: “God has also networked me with good people. They just take the burden off me. I just give them rundown of what I want to do and that’s it.”
As part of networking, Aisha started forming communities and training people on how to choose the right food and avoid eating canned and over-processed food. She also reached out to elderly people, going to their meetings and donating food items. She also turned to the use of exhibitions.
“At exhibitions, I engage people as they come. I make them try my products out. I get more contacts, give them my number and they reach out to me, order and we deliver. Many of the people I meet call me back even if they don’t buy products at the exhibition,” Aisha told The Nation, from the venue of this year’s Lagos International Trade Fair, where she had an exhibition.
To significantly reduce overhead cost and free her business of idle time, Aisha said she engages people only when she needs them.
Bracing the odds
Like any other budding entrepreneur in Nigeria, Aisha had her fair share of challenges when she started out. “When I was registering my Activated Charcoal and Egg shell calcium, the Technology Incubation Centre (TIC) was the midwife that helped us, but they didn’t have a lot of understanding of what they were doing then, she said, for instance.
She said although the Centre has gotten better now, its initial lack of understanding of its mandate was responsible for the delay in registering her products with NAFDAC despite spending so much money. According to her, the Centre failed to properly educate her that her products are herbal and should first go through the Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board under Lagos State Ministry of Health.
“They (TIC) should have educated me, but I wasted that money. Under NAFDAC, you have regulated products, but they are in different classes; there is food, herbal and cosmetics.
“So, some of my products that I paid for under NAFDAC shouldn’t have been paid for under food or classified under food. They should have gone under herbal, and nobody told me. That’s a challenge,” she fumed.
She, however, said she has done the needful by getting licensed by the Lagos Traditional Medicine Board under Lagos State Ministry of Health, after wasting time and resources at NAFDAC for almost three years, going up and down.
Aisha also lamented the secrecy around divulging useful information that could help aspiring entrepreneurs. “Most Nigerians don’t share knowledge. Most people hoard information as if they tell you they will not sell. It won’t stop them from selling. It’s so sad because they make others go through the same rigours they went through,” she said.
According to her, there is no need reinventing the wheel. Those that came before should nurture others to get it right. “People are so secretive as if you are taking away their business when they tell you,” she stated, noting that that’s one challenge she identified that made her start a Boot Camp where she gives information free to people and also mentor them.
Aisha also said apart from the normal infrastructure challenge, Aisha said there should be factories that people can walk in and use without necessarily setting up their factories, a sort of common-user facility or central hub similar to what the Lagos State Government started for fashion designers.
“We don’t have enough hubs or incubation centres. The one in Agege where I am registered under is so small and there is no open unit for start-ups. All the units have been taken by people many years ago and they are still there; they are not moving out for start-ups to come in. We don’t have enough units. It’s really sad,” she said.
Despite the challenges, Aisha has continued to charge on, balancing her professional life with an equal amount of commitment to her family and loved ones.
