Potential gold mine in creative basket weaving

Weave and Co. is an indigenous company mainly into basket works, furniture making, wood work, sculptural and metal works, sourcing everything locally. The basket work was started four years ago while the sculptural and metal works started about 16 years ago.

Founder Ora Ataguba, the founder, studied English Language at the University of Jos. She says, “I have always been very good with my hands. I dabbled into tailoring at a time, but when I came in contact with some furniture makers, we decided to work together. I was producing in a factory in Cotonou, Benin Republic, because of poor electricity supply in Nigeria. But when there was a ban on importation of furniture about seven years ago, the business wind down.”

Restarting

But not daunted, she restarted. “When my business resurfaced again in Nigeria four years ago, I decided to do something that would not depend on electric power, so we do more of handwork. Of course, we need a lot of hands, both men and women.

All they need is the skills. We also need people who are good in sorting of the raw materials such as wood, cane, making sure they are insect free. We have to ensure they work according to specification and do monitoring of the work while in progress. I have a professional who supervises that,” she says.

Products

On the products, she says “they are generally called basket work; we weave furniture, anything that can be woven, even if it is a part of the staircase in a house, we can weave it. We make hamper baskets, which are dual functional baskets, that are reusable because we want to move away from the idea of people throwing their baskets away or using them for onions or dirty things in the kitchen. The baskets we make are special. If used as hamper, the basket is very useful after using up the items inside. We use cane and wood to make trays, wine holders, bread holders, food basket, shopping basket, laundry baskets, house furniture, pen holders, bathroom tools, and so on.”

Durability

Ataguba adds: “If cane is well woven, it can last longer than plastic, 10 years or more; the cane will just get darker, just like people do as they grow old. All our baskets are framed with metal or solid wood, that gives it a sturdy support that makes it last.”

Market

Explaining market intricacies, she says: “We have been working on making the product exportable, but there is stiff competition with Asian equivalent of the products.

Those ones are cheaper, so we are working on how to bring down the price. To do that we need a larger pool of people working on production. We intend to go back to the rural areas to engage rural women in production. I am from Kogi State, I can go back home and do that. The issue of transportation then comes in, but we have to weigh which one is better, producing in the rural area or in the city. But the market in Nigeria alone is massive, because our basket works are of good quality, they are in very high demand.”

By: OLUYINKA ALAWODE