Do-it-yourself furniture stores in Africa
By Jon Fernquest[Introduction | Vocabulary | Article | Reading Questions | Answers]
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Roadside furniture stores are common in many parts of Thailand.
Furniture spread out by the side of the road provides free advertising.
Recently roadside furniture stores have become popular in Nairobi, Kenya in East Africa.
What makes these stores different is the fashionable designs that can be found within them.
These designs immitate the latest western styles like Ikea's.
Customers seeking seeking the latest designs popular in the west have provided stores with furniture catalogues and magazines with photos that have served as models.
The furniture stores reverse engineer the western deisgns and build them at lower cost providing employment and training to local youth.
Overall, the roadside furniture stores of Kenya provide an admirable model for development.
Reading Questions
Here are some questions to guide your reading (See answers at end):1. What kind of upscale furniture store has become popular recently in Nairobi, Kenya?
What kind of furniture do they sell?
2. Where do the designs for most of the furniture come from?
3. How much cheaper is the furniture in these stores compared to furniture made in America or Europe?
4. What are the origins of these roadside furniture stores in Kenya?
5. How do these roadside stores get free advertising and free design ideas? (Use inference)
6. How quickly did this roadside furniture industry spread?
7. What kind of employment benefits does the roadside furniture industry provide to the Kenyan economy?
Bangkok Post Article: October 31, 2006
'It's like Africa's Ikea'Road-side shops answer Kenya's furniture needs
The one-kilometre stretch of road leading to Nairobi's affluent Karen suburb is well-known in the area as the best place to buy furniture. Dozens of makeshift shops display their wares - mahogany beds and dinner tables, metal coffee tables and CD racks - along the side of the road.
While chain stores and chic furniture designers in the West seek to imitate African carpentry with bulky wooden pieces trimmed with leopard-print, Kenyan furniture makers offer clients inexpensive custom-made products, the designs for which often come right out of American and European catalogues.
"Anybody with any sense buys their furniture here,'' said Rocky Hitchcock, standing between the upholstered chairs on display.
"You can furnish your whole house from the side of the road,'' he said.
With sawing, welding and varnishing going on in the background, these makeshift stores have Kenyans and expatriates alike braving the scorching sun in order to furnish their homes.
Hitchcock, a security consultant, was shopping with his wife one typically sunny afternoon for a dining set.
"We're paying one-third to one half of the price of a similar piece in a European chain store like [Swedish furniture store] Ikea,'' he said.
And indeed, the average price for a tailor-made wooden dining set with eight chairs goes for around $275 (10,143 baht). Upholstered chairs cost a little extra.
The furniture vendors aren't entirely clear on how this outdoor market came to be, but say it was driven by demand from white Kenyans who didn't want to pay the exorbitant rates of imported furniture.
"One person had a shop here making windows and doors. Wazungu [whites] living in Karen would pass by and bring furniture designs for him to make. Someone had the idea that it would make good money because the people pass here every day,'' David Nyagah Ndusi, owner of Joy Metal Fabrications, said.
The idea caught on to keen Kenyan entrepreneurs who copied his model and began selling their own creations. And in Kenya, a country where half the population lives on less than one dollar a day, any successful attempt at money-making spreads like wildfire.
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"Some customers leave us the catalogues so we can be inspired by them,'' he said.
So while up-and-coming African designers bring African-inspired furnishings to the West, Kenyan customers bring Western designs to local furniture makers.
"When we see a picture from a catalogue we can easily copy it, "said Joyce Gichuru, manager of Usalama Furniture, shaded by the parasol of a recently completed patio set.
"It's like Africa's Ikea,'' Hitchcock said. "And customers can bring the vendors their own design.''
And the furniture sellers can copy pretty much everything. Victorian-inspired wooden double beds go for less than $100 (3,688 baht). An intricately designed four-seater metal dining set with a glass table-top sells for $195 (7,539). The prices are all negotiable, of course.
This compares quite favourably with Kenya's largest supermarket chain just a few kilometres up the road, which sells furniture at prices comparable to those in Europe.
Another outlet - the Africa House, which sells furniture from East and Southern Africa online - charges around $300 (11,064 baht) for one upholstered dining chair, including sea freight costs while a wooden bed goes for around $2,500 (92,200 baht), including shipping.
In addition to affordable prices, Kenya's independent roadside furniture fabricators also provide employment to young, unskilled workers who learn a trade.
Gichuru of Usalama Furnitures pays her employees on commission: a $100 bed, which takes two to three days to make, will earn a carpenter about $7 (258 baht). Ndisu's metal workers are paid $4 (148 baht) a day.
But with so many furniture vendors along this strip, competition is fierce. Ndisu, who has been in business for four years, said he makes a profit of around $275 (10,142 baht) a month. And that's when business is good.
Despite the seemingly small return, furniture fabrication is a relatively lucrative trade.
And for customers like Hitchcock and his wife Jane and others who can afford to buy the furniture, the bargain is unbeatable. "Why would we shop anywhere else?'' he said. DPA
Vocabulary
do-it-yourself (DIY) - things that you do yourself like repair the house, rather than hiring someone else to do (See Wikipedia)
a model - an example that looks and works like the real thing, that you can use to help you build more copies
reverse engineer - taking something apart like a machine to learn about the technology and how you can copy or immitate the design and build something similar (See Wikipedia on reverse engineering)
upscale - high quality expensive products (for customers in higher social classes or incomes)
affluent - have a lot of money
makeshift - temporary and low quality (made from whatever was available)
wares - the things that someone sells (usually in a market or on the side of the street)
mahogany - a kind of expensive wood (See Wikipedia)
coffee tables - a small table usually in front of a sofa (See Wikipedia)
chain stores - stores with the same design and format, selling the same things, located in different places, but owned by the same company
chic - fashionable and sophisticated
imitate - copy (use a model to make another thing that looks and operates just like the model, doesn't have to be exactly the same as the model)
bulky - large and heavy
trimmed with - decorated along the edges with
clients - (formal) customers
custom-made - specially made for the needs of a customers
upholstered - furniture with a soft cover (that makes it more comfortable and adds a decorative pattern or solid color)
welding - the technology of joining pieces of metal together
varnishing - painting wood with an oily liquid (gives the wood a hard, clear, and shiny surface)
expatriates - people who are living outside of their country in another country
scorching - burning hot
dining set - a dinner table with chairs
Ikea - a popular Swedish furniture manufacturer (See Wikipedia)
tailor-made - custom-made (see above)
exorbitant - too expensive
to fabricate - to make
fabrications - things that are made
fabricator - a person who makes things
caught on - became popular
spreads like wildfire - spreads quickly
cluttered - too many things in a small space
outdated - old, the the current model or version
inspired by x - get creative idea from x
up-and-coming - will be popular in the near future
a parasol - an umbrella
Victorian-inspired - (See Wikipedia on Victorian architecture and fashion)
intricately - made with many small parts or details
on commission - earns a precentage of sales (rather than a fixed salary)
vendors - sellors
along a strip - along a row of stores lined up along the road
fierce competition - extreme competition
lucrative - profitable, can make a lot of money from it
a trade - a skilled kind of work one does to earn a living
Answer Key:
1. What kind of upscale furniture store has become popular recently in Nairobi, Kenya?
What kind of furniture do they sell?
Roadside furniture stores in affluent neighborhoods have become popular in Nairobi.
These stores sell inexpensive custom-made furniture including beds, dinner tables, coffee tables, and CD racks.
2. Where do the designs for most of the furniture come from?
The designs come from American and European furniture catalogues and magazines.
3. How much cheaper is the furniture in these stores compared to furniture made in America or Europe?
Roughly 30% to 50% less.
4. What are the origins of these roadside furniture stores in Kenya?
"White Kenyans" who didn't want to pay high prices for imported furniture.
("demand from white Kenyans who didn't want to pay the exorbitant rates of imported furniture.")
5. How do these roadside stores get free advertising and free design ideas? (Use inference)
Customers provide the stores with free furniture designs from furniture catalogs and magazines.
The stores get free advertising when people pass buy the store, see the furniture, and enter the store.
("Wazungu [whites] living in Karen would pass by and bring furniture designs for him to make. Someone had the idea that it would make good money because the people pass here every day")
6. How quickly did this roadside furniture industry spread?
Quickly. "Like wildfire."
("The idea caught on to keen Kenyan entrepreneurs who copied his model and began selling their own creations. And in Kenya, a country where half the population lives on less than one dollar a day, any successful attempt at money-making spreads like wildfire.")
7. What kind of employment benefits does the roadside furniture industry provide to the Kenyan economy?
This new industry provides employment to "young, unskilled workers who learn a trade...a relatively lucrative trade."
