MakersandShakers
Princess OdiakosaSweet Dreams
A small thing had the power to diminish the joy of traveling abroad for Princess Odiakosa - chocolates. Every time she ventured out, family members and friends would demand that she bring back chocolates; on the other hand, she had no Nigerian chocolate of quality to gift her friends abroad. It made no sense to the training and marketing manager at dbrownconsulting, a financial consultancy in Nigerian coastal city Lagos, especially as Nigeria was one of the leading producers of cocoa in Africa, the main ingredient of chocolates. There was even a cocoa tree growing right in front of the family house, planted by her sister.
So Odiakosa’s thoughts turned to making chocolates herself. “I have always wanted to make chocolates because I love chocolates, and I also love my country,” she said, finding time between two jobs and a hectic schedule to share her entrepreneurial dream with ChinAfrica. “I wanted us to have our own chocolate, something we can gift to people and ourselves too. Something we can call our own.”
But she couldn’t find any chocolate classes in Lagos and it was only when she went to Sweden to visit a friend that she came across such courses. She decided to go back to Sweden and find a short course in chocolatemaking that would coincide with her trip. It materialized in 2014 and two years later, she had started Kalabari Gecko, her chocolate brand, making craft chocolate from 100-percent Nigeria-grown cocoa beans.
The 37-year-old gets her beans from a trusted farmer in Ondo State and sources all other ingredients locally. The colorful name, that is as eye-catching as the chocolates with the accompanying image of the winsome little black gecko with bands of bright color splashed across its body, came after an acquaintance advised her to choose a Nigerian name. The Kalabari is an ancient tribe who lived in the Niger Delta.
Kalabari Gecko is an inspiring example of passion and time management. “My factory is home-based,” Odiakosa said. “I do not have any worker for now, as I usually produce before going to work in the mornings or after work. I can produce 800 truffles in four days.” As a small entrepreneur, she decided not to seek a bank loan for her business. The seed money for it came from her day-time job. To get business, she makes use of the Internet and social media. Orders can be placed through Kalabari Gecko’s website, Twitter and Instagram pages and friends and fans also pass the word on. She has exported chocolate samples to the UK in a limited quantity to test international waters.
The sales last year, intended to test the market, were heartening. This year, she has seen orders grow briskly. “Valentine’s Day was a bit overwhelming for me,” she said. “I had to reject some orders because my day job has been so demanding. I am adjusting more to the Nigerian palate. You need to love chocolate to make it; you need to appreciate every facet and pleasure it delivers.”
For a divorcee who is fighting a 10-year custody battle for her three children, time is at a premium. “My current job is very demanding, so juggling everything can be a bit too much sometimes,” she said. “I work on keeping my eyes on my goals, and staying focused and remaining positive.”
The plan for 2017 is to leave her job in November and become a full-time chocolatier. “Making chocolates all day would be an absolute pleasure,” she said.
Currently making chocolates before she goes to her day-time job or after she finishes there, Princess Odiakosa says she can produce 800 truffles in four days COURTESY PHOTOS
Abenet Papy at an event in Beijing to promote Ethiopian culture and her Habesha CoffeeCulture in a Cup
TO Abenet Papy, a cup of coffee is not just a drink, it is an introduction to the culture of her country. “I love coffee and I love my country,” said the 26-year-old entrepreneur from Ethiopia who learned how to make coffee the Ethiopian way from her grandmother when she was nine. “That’s what made me go into the coffee business.”
Papy came to China in 2010 as a wide-eyed teen-ager to study engineering on a Chinese government scholarship. After completing her bachelor’s degree, she is now doing her master’s at the Beijing University of Technology. In the course of her seven-year stay in Beijing, she temped from time to time, working mostly as a salesperson at expos and a demonstrator at cultural events.
“At events like tourism bazars and garden expos, where you promote your country’s culture, I would be asked to demonstrate how to make coffee, since that is part of Ethiopia’s culture,” she said. “Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, which gets its name from Kafa, home of wild Arabica coffee. We have more than 58 flavors in coffee, including most of the fruit flavors tea has. Yet not many people know that. Many in China think coffee came from Latin America, Brazil or Colombia.”While working with a prominent coffee seller in China, she was upset at the way they ran their business. “It was very commercial and utterly profit-oriented,” she said. “I thought it was a disrespect to our culture. In Ethiopia, you don’t drink coffee alone, you always drink it with your neighbors. You also serve desserts and nuts with the coffee and people come and talk about their problems, gossip, share stuff.”
That’s why she started her company, Habesha Coffee, in 2015 in Beijing. Habesha means the people from North Africa. “I started with 35 kg of coffee brought from Ethiopia, with my parents paying for the entire venture,” she said. “It was to test the waters.”
She sold the coffee on the Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao and WeChat app and at outlets and expos. The response was good enough to continue. She buys the coffee beans from the authorized state outlet in Addis Ababa and then gets it roasted there as well. It adds risk and costs to the venture since the roasted beans need to be consumed within a period of time or lose their freshness. This means she has to airlift her consignments; shipping, though cheaper, would take three weeks at least.
Still, her venture has been satisfactory enough for her to plan opening her coffee shop cum restaurant in Beijing this year as well as sales outlets in a few other major commercial Chinese cities with a sizeable African population like Shanghai and Guangzhou. She is also discussing with an interested Chinese investor if the beans can be roasted in China, which would give her business more leeway.
Along with coffee, she sells Ethiopian ceramic coffee cups and the indispensable Ethiopian coffee pot, handmade from clay. After she finishes her master’s in structural engineering in 2018, Papy plans to both work as an engineer and run her coffee business. “I like both and I want to grow simultaneously,” she said.
She also likes a challenge. “In China, people don’t really drink coffee, they drink tea,” she pointed out. “I want to bring something new to the Chinese tea culture.”
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