A day with Munach Shoes CEO
Henrietta Ifeoma Lawrence is an entrepreneur who is out to promote the ‘Made in Nigeria’ campaign with her brand of shoes, which she produces for both sexes and for the Lagos market.
Lawrence’s Munach Shoes is visibly located at the Victory Estate, Iba, Ojo, which is on the outskirts of Lagos State.
Asked what spurred her to venture into the terrain chiefly considered an exclusive preserve of men, she says, “I just love to create and find joy in seeing the products of my creativity,” with emphatic confidence. And she exudes quite a lot of it despite having to work with leather objects and sharp knives with which she cuts the leather into shape.
Her journey into the shoe manufacturing business is as fascinating as her ambition burns. She trained here in Nigeria at a location about one hour drive from her home. The standard of the location obviously puts her among the opulent. So, why go into learning how to make shoes? “I love to see my products,” she says.
She started production this year with funds made available by her very supportive husband, and with that, she acquired machines for the manufacture of the product she has chosen to call Munach Shoes.
Explaining the choice of Munach Shoes as her brand name, Lawrence queried, “have you heard of Versace Shoes?”, adding, “that was my punch line for adopting that brand name. And that name also spurs and fires my ambition because if that brand can become popular, with time, I can also do what they are doing in Versace.”
Lawrence sees prospects for ‘Made in Nigeria’ goods and hopes that with the current reality of dwindling foreign exchange, ‘Made in Nigeria’ remains the best way to go. “Besides, there is a vast market that cannot just be left in the hands of foreigners, so we have to think Nigeria and manufacture for Nigeria using Nigerian talents.”
For her, it is better to get the raw materials from abroad and use them to manufacture here than to bring in finished products from abroad. This could probably explain why all the leather materials she uses are from Italy.
As a starter, Lawrence’s major challenge is power supply as she has to depend solely on a generator, which also supplies power to her home. However, to expand and produce more and offer jobs to others, more funds have to be invested in the project.
On her capacity currently and looking ahead five years from now, she says that, for now, working solely between when she goes to drop the children in school in the morning and going to pick them up in the afternoon, she can produce 200 pairs of shoes per month. But in five years’ time, with adequate funding, half a million pairs per annum will not be a pipe dream, with the right mix of human and material resources.
“With the necessary funding, I can employ more people, structure the production process and departmentalise it with some people in charge of cutting, lacing, polishing, and the production of sandals, shoes of various sizes, styles and qualities, shoes for both sexes and for the different age categories, and the like. But currently, machine or no machine, I am into production and will continue to produce as the joy of putting a product into the market that bears your stamp of creativity can only be better imagined for me,” she enthuses.
Lawrence feels that Nigeria has no business importing shoes if all the latent talents of creative Nigerians are properly harnessed. “We should get involved in putting our innate creative abilities to work and sooner than later, they will start working for us,” she hopes, even as she agrees that the market is a limiting factor on the quantity of shoes she currently produces.