Wena Hardware: How Vaolah Amumpaire is providing Building Solutions to Ugandans in the Diaspora

In 2017, Vaolah Amumpaire was working as a sales agent for a wheat making company.

One of her roles was to increase the distribution network for the company in places where it had never been. 

One afternoon, she found herself chasing an endless road in the Albertine region in what seemed to be a very deserted place. For hours, it was just her and the driver. 

She wondered what would befall them in case their car broke down. Where would they find help? Who could come to their rescue? Was the nearest garage where they were headed or behind them? These unanswered questions planted an idea in her mind; to set up an online platform that would catalogue the different garages across the country for stranded motorists to turn to. 

Around the same time, there was news of a soldier who shot had returned home and found that there was no house built for all the money he had sent home for years. He shot his wife. 

This and many other stories about diasporans having issues with stunted projects gave Vaolah another idea of coming up with a platform to help Ugandans in the diaspora with purchasing construction material online without going through the hustle of chasing people down. 

With these two ideas not leaving her mind, she decided to reach out to a web developer to find ways of how to go about them. The developer decided to begin with the idea of having an online hardware store. 

Towards the end of 2017, the idea was taking shape; she wanted an online hardware store. “I never looked back,” she says.

There was one problem though. Vaolah is a certified marketer and that is all she had known.  “I had never been in the construction space. I knew nothing about materials.”  The website developer wanted content but she did not have had any nor did she know what to do. 

The challenges notwithstanding, she was already up and running talking about the

Wena hardware on her social media platforms. Why Wena? A South African friend had always used the word “Wena” and Vaolah thought it sounded so good. 

“It was so short and memorable. I later learnt that it means ‘You’.” She adapted it to mean “Your Hardware”. 

A customer came through social media with a list of items that he wanted to purchase for a construction project they wanted to do. The list had about 90% of what an ordinary house needed. She had to find out the prices and everything about them. In getting to learn about them, she got schooled on what her business needed. 

Much as the purchase did not happen, she had got the idea of what she was dealing with. 

She developed the hardware catalogue that was uploaded on the website. This happened in late 2018. However, it took her until mid 2019 to get her first client who bought a tape measure. 

She was featured in #AirtelMyHustle, a one lifetime opportunity that opened doors for Wena.

“I used to talk about my business like we were earning big but there was nothing. She concentrated her efforts on reaching out to media houses for invitations. She had done an interview with NTV before. When she was featured by Airtel, she was picked up by CGTN among other media houses which pushed the brand. 

Throughout the course of 2018 and the first half of 2019, she had to take on different jobs to be able to fund the Wena project. She hired two employees; one with knowledge on hardware stores and another who was managing the back end of the website. 

She was working as a hotel manager at Nyaika Hotel in Fort Portal at the time. She used her salary to pay the team in Kampala as well as facilitate her endless travels between Kampala

and Fort Portal especially for the media interviews.

However, by mid 2019, there were so many travels she could make. The hardware was picking up and she could no longer afford to be far away for so long. She quit her job to take up Wena as a fulltime job. 

For a person who admits to having “stumbled into the business, she made so many mistakes. She struggled with working out her mark-up. 

As more orders came through, she learnt more on making the business work and for hermark-up. She also worked on the inquiries and navigation of the website which worked for the traffic and efficiency of using the online store. 

Vaolah admits that she stumbled into business. “I always saw myself as a career person. I only saw myself as a marketer at the time. Then this idea happened and all I wanted was to execute it.”

In all the interviews, there was that one question that kept coming back; “What was your inspiration for starting this?” The more this question came about, the clearer her vision became. “Wena Hardware was all about changing the narrative of stories of Ugandans abroad who were returning home to non-existing projects that they had sent money for.”

The #AirtelMyHustle challenge opened doors for her to feature on other media platforms. They believed the idea. “It’s all I wanted. I wanted the public to trust us.” 

Currently

Wena works with over 500 hardware stores, timber yards, and different suppliers of

construction material across the country. The business moved from months of having no orders to now a volume of thousands of items per month- about 5,000 orders a month. About 120 orders per day.

Most businesses start off as Kampala based but that was not the case for Wena Hardware. It began as a countrywide business. They had to build rapport with various service providers across the country. Their target is to have up to 1000 partners before the end of 2022, a challenge that this 11-man team is yet to pull off. 

Challenges

Vaolah was very green and innocent about the entire business. “I was neither a techie nor a construction engineer. I only had an idea.” But because she was a marketer, she sold Wena confidently, like it was an already established brand.  Her biggest task was to build a brand and protect it. Those questions have helped her to grow. She had a lot to learn. Five years later, it was worth the time.

Secondly, she did not know that “people are people”. People are different and they respond differently to challenges. Some keep their word, others don’t. “You need to assist people to help them become the best person they can be.”

Thirdly, there was the challenge of resources. She could not afford to finance the business.

Because of this, she could not afford to hire the people she needed to first track the growth of the company. That saw her take the longer route which has brought her here.  There was no ready market for the online hardware. “We had to cultivate our own market.” 

Setback

She has had to deal with the idea that people will always leave. “It takes a lot of time to train someone to learn the way the business works but you can’t control that. People will move on when they want to.”

Lessons Learnt

“I have learnt that one can be a great marketer and the worst CEO. Five years later, “I purposed to be a better CEO. I dedicate my time to be a better CEO. I want to be able to have a conversation with other CEOs at all levels. This has seen her enroll for different courses and mentorship to become a better one. Simple things like communication, time management, and respect for others are simple things one could easily miss out on. 

With time, she has been able to clarify her why. At the start, she did not really know what the business was about. But today, the hardware offers genuine products at an affordable price.

Running a business that covers countrywide deliveries, she has appreciated how far and wide the country is.

But most importantly, she has seen the goodness of people. “There are people I have never met who have marketed our brand and mentioned it in places we have never been. I’m forever grateful to them.”

Advice to fellow founders Vaolah’s advice to startup founders is to go to the field and do the business. “Go to the market and learn from the business itself.” 

On business

“Business is not something that you can learn about in class. You’ve to get your hands dirty and do it. However, you can learn the basics of doing business in class  but the real thing is in the field.” 

“I want the world to have more Elon Masks. The more we have such people, the more we can learn that you can fit out of the box that people around you want you to fit in. That you can defy things. That you can go out there and make something out of nothing.”

Recognition

Airtel My Hustle in 2018

The 2019 Berlin outstanding innovation 

African women in tech 2020

50 African Businesses to look for in 2020

Women Moving Uganda in 2021

Impactful Businesses for Africans in the Diaspora in 2019

She has also featured on BBC and CNN. 

After Covid, more people embraced doing online services which came in as a blessing. “We no longer serve Ugandans in the diaspora only; we are serving Ugandans at home who do do not have the time to go to the hardware store themselves.”

The Future

Wena wants to work with more service providers. Her target is to get more than 1000 of them by the end of the year. 

She wants to interest more women into the business. Currently 2% of the service providers are women. “There are not many women in the construction space.” Women need to be supported to stay in this business. Construction is open for them. Vaolah is looking at

inspiring more women, particularly mothers to come to the industry. That way, the generation afterwards, I will appreciate the industry. 

Wena looks at the future as being the Pan African online store providing construction material. So far, they have spread their wings to Kenya and Zambia. “If we can have other countries’ brands come to Uganda, why not send out the Ugandan brands too?”

As tech grows, Wena wants to champion the adoption of tech especially in the construction industry.

Today, only 5% of customers use the wallet but this number is expected to grow with time as more people embrace cashless payments. As part of their growth strategy, Wena accepts  visa, MasterCard , mobile money and cash on delivery for orders below UGX500,000 but with time, they look at getting more payment options.

So far, Wena Hardware has undergone a number of upgrades which have cost US$ 20,000 as investment. They are currently working on inbuilt elements of artificial intelligence to help the shoppers to visualise what they intend to buy. 

For someone who was not sure of what she was building, she is grateful and glad she stayed to build a solution for the construction industry.

“You don’t have to have it all figured out, start and keep at it. It may take time, but it will be worth the journey.”