Olivia Onyemaobi is the founder of PadUp Creations, a social enterprise company with bias for the production of washable and reusable pads for women. In this interview with Dorcas Egede, Onyemaobi who had a thriving banking career for almost a decade took up girl child advocacy which has since metamorphosed into a bugdeoning business, she tells her riveting story. Excerpts:
Why did you decide to go into the production of reusable pads?
I decided to go into the production of washable and reusable pads to solve a problem. Initially, I volunteered in 2015 to administer therapy on sexually abused girls and educating them on how to avoid sexual abuse. But after administering therapy on these girls, we discovered that most of them still went back to their abusers, so when we inquired to know the reason, most of them complained that they didn’t have access to sanitary pads and most of the men provide sanitary pads in exchange for sex.
This was a very common response we got from secondary school girls between ages 12-17. So, I started looking for the most sustainable way of keeping them away from their abusers. I thought of buying and distributing always sanitary pads to them, but on a second thought, I discovered that I will only solve their problem once in a month, so I started making research on a more sustainable option, that’s how I came about washable and reusable sanitary pads.
So, between July 2015 and June 2016, I made research on how to make reusable sanitary pads that will be sustainable and last these girls for a period of one year. As I discovered this problem, I told myself that nobody could better solve it than myself, that was why I quit the job to give full concentration to the business.
Did you have any training to prepare you for what you do?
Seriously, I want to be spiritual this time around. When I discovered the problem, I wasn’t just having passion for solving the problem; I had compassion on these girls. So, I first went into prayer. The first inspiration on how to do this came through dreams. Within that period, I had no formal training; I didn’t even know how to operate most of the machines. I did the first prototype without some of the components and it worked, so I had to travel out to look for a solution on how to make the more sustainable one. But prior to that, I didn’t have any formal training on menstruation and menstrual hygiene. I studied accountancy for my first degree and did my masters in business administration, so I had no training in any medical discipline.
We kept researching for a period of one year, tried so many things that didn’t work, until we were able to come up with what we are currently using.
What are the regulatory and legal requirements to meet in this kind of business?
The basic thing is to get the business incorporated, depending on what type of incorporation you want, sole proprietorship, limited liability or even as an NGO. The first thing you have to do is secure the name of what you want and have value to what to define in your registration. With that, you can start. You don’t need any formal regulatory requirement to start, because even when you go to NAFDAC or SON, they will require you to develop a prototype, test it on people or yourself, find out some things that you know should be corrected before they give you NAFDAC number.
So, the basic regulatory requirement is to have your business registered and you can start up something. After you have developed the prototype and tested it to be sure that you can defend it anywhere, you can now approach NAFDAC for certification and other regulatory bodies like the SON.
Do you need to belong in an association?
No. One important thing to note here is that we are the only ones who have commercialised the making of washable and reusable pads at the moment. There might be other people who are still trying to come up with something like this but have not commercialised it, we are the only ones who have done that, and we are currently serving 13 African countries. So, there’s really no association for you to belong to. However, to improve on yourself and what you’re doing, you can belong to associations that have to do with menstrual hygiene management and reproductive health for your own personal growth. But association in terms of business, there’s no such thing.
Which body regulates your activities?
This depends on the angle you’re looking at it from. If you’re talking about certification of the product, we have IPAN, NAFDAC, SON. But if it’s in terms of remittance to government, you have FIRS for the payment of your taxes and all that. Quality control has to do with NAFDAC because they are in charge of everything that has to do with health, hygiene and whatsoever. They certify that a product is good for human use.
What does it take to start this business in terms of staffing, funding and other logistics?
Seriously, it is important to state that the most difficult business I’ve ever done in my life is selling reusable pads. But I think we have done a greater work that it will be easier for anybody coming into this line of business, because we have been able to sensitise over a million people in Africa about reusable pads, not just about the cost effectiveness or affordability, but the health benefits.
In terms of funding, I started with $5,000 fixed capital support from the Tony Elumelu Foundation in addition to the $10,000 I had in savings. This business requires you to acquire a facility and according to NAFDAC regulation, you must be the only company in the facility you occupy. You cannot share the building with anyone, the building must not be residential. It must also be a building that has not less than three rooms, one for production, store, cutting room, logistics room and a lot of other rooms. We started with a minimum of five rooms because we needed to acquire the machine, we needed space for the raw materials we were bringing in, the processed and the finished ones. So, it’s really space consuming. There are so many regulatory requirements that make it somewhat difficult to start. You can’t start small, NAFDAC considers the space you use for this kind of business as a health facility, so your space can’t be compromised.
Apart from the facility, you also need money to buy the machines that you need, and you know that Nigeria manufactures none of these machines. You need to get put so many things in place, like a system that you will be operating from, having a place that you keep your records. If you don’t have enough money, you can decide to start with few machines, but the problem with this is how many would you be able to produce in a day?
In terms of logistics, of course you know Nigeria’s system isn’t really favourable in the sense that the rail system is not working, everything has to go through roads, so this makes dispatching more expensive, such that when the product reaches the final consumer it is very expensive. So, we devised another means of dispatching to consumers without going through the public system. It depends on the individual, like I told you earlier, we took one whole year researching this business. This is one thing that is not common in Nigeria. A Nigerian man who thinks about a business, just goes into it and starts producing. They don’t take time to study the terrain, the requirement, the possible future challenges and how they’ll be able to mitigate it.
So, before you begin a business, I think it is really important to study that business intensively, so that when you start and meet some of those challenges, you’ll be able to know how to handle them. You should learn to plan for challenges so that when they come, as they certainly will come, you will be prepared to face them.
How many staff did you start with and how many have you today?
From the time of developing a prototype, we had two staff developing the prototype. I was still in the service of the bank. Once we completed the prototype development and we had tested it on 202 people, I quit the banking job and started with 16 staff, of which two were university graduates. Currently, we have 93 people that are working with us. We are targeting to get them to 233 by June next year, because we are hoping to start a franchise in Botswana by February 2019. We started in 2016 with research and developing the prototype. It took us six months to develop the prototype and test on people to determine its acceptability. Commercial activities of this business didn’t take off until January of 2017. So, it is okay to say that we actually started operations in 2017.
What is the gestation period before you start making profit from the venture?
Profit? This is where I keep hammering that if you really want to start a business, do so for the solution you want to create, take your mind off profit, especially when you want to solve a social problem. If you want to solve a social problem, you don’t address it like someone who wants to make money. Unlike those making food or drink to sell, our product lasts for a period of one year. Some people that bought since 2016 have not returned to buy again, but we still need to keep exploring new markets for us to sustain the business and the idea. If you go into this business simply because you have passion, it may not sustain you when the heat comes, so be focused on the compassion you have on the people who are the users of your solution, otherwise you’ll quit along the way.
Profit isn’t something that you get in business in the first two years. There are some businesses you start today and start making profit tomorrow, but how sustainable is such profit? Every single profit you make has to be reinvested into the business for it to grow. For instance, if I have started with 20 machines, I don’t expect that in the next two years the machines should still be 20, I should have been exploring new markets and my machines should be up to 80. Before you can start anticipating to make profit in this business, you should give yourself a minimum of three years.
Do you consider this business lucrative enough?
This is the most amazing job I have ever seen in my life. People may not understand it. The most lucrative business anyone can imagine is this business I’m doing now, because we are not just focused on producing sanitary pads, we also take menstrual hygiene management training to schools, villages, we train girls and women; we make them know about their bodies and train them about reproductive health. The joy we see on these girls’ faces makes this business much more lucrative than any other thing you can think of.
Now, you’ve talked about lucrativeness in terms of impact created, can you talk about lucrativeness in terms of profit?
I will not lie to you that the business is not lucrative, it is lucrative. But it isn’t something that is a daily thing. If I’m making drinks for instance, I’m sure that I will sell everyday because people will definitely buy drinks, but now this is something that people come to buy once a year, so any time you make sales, you consider it very lucrative.
I’ve taken a whole year to study this business. We have our peak periods and our injury time. This month is the worse period for us. In August demand is so high because most people are going back to school and most organisations want to sponsor girls going back to school, so at that time, sales are high. But then, as long as you are getting money to pay salaries, buy materials, and take care of all operational expenses, you can’t say the business is not lucrative. It is. If we have not gone to borrow money and have not shut down for a period because we can’t keep up with production, then we can say the business is lucrative.
What’s the profit margin between what you made in 2017 and what you’ve made so far in 2018?
There is marginal difference in profit. In 2017 we set operational standards that have so far helped the business in 2018. So, while we didn’t make so much money in 2017, the groundwork we set rolling paved way for more profit in 2018. There was over 300% increase in our sales and returns.
What are some low points in this business?
They are many, from getting people to believe in your idea, even your staff, to power and sales. Most times, we spend like N93,000 in two weeks on power. There is also the battle for sales because you are going to sell to people who need to believe in what you have to offer before you can get them to buy, this isn’t a very easy thing you do. You have to have strong belief in your product to be able to convince someone.
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