Olamide and Damilola Kolade. Credit: New Telegraph
Store owners discuss cartridge refilling market in Nigeria.
An article by New Telegraph featured a profile of a Cartridge World franchise based in Nigeria, with the store’s owners – brothers Olamide and Damilola Kolade – explaining how the business works and what the cartridge refilling market is like in Nigeria.
With the aim of turning “waste to wealth”, the store is located in Lagos, with its main business involving the refilling of cartridges. Director of Business Development, Olimade, explained that “our primary advantage is that by operating as a franchise [it] means we are leveraging on 25 years of expertise of Cartridge World […] so the expertise we gain from them in refilling cartridges is what our competitors don’t have.
“In all the process, we get standard update from research and development. We know the best materials to use. We know when to change the parts of a bad toner and ink cartridges. We do have a big advantage over our competitors”.
Commenting on why the business is a worthwhile venture in Nigeria, Olimade said: “[E]nvironmental waste management is a big problem in Nigeria, especially electronic environmental waste. We do not have the capacity to create special incinerators. So you find that electronic wastes constitute environmental hazards – ink going directly into land; and the plastics which take a long time to degrade. And overtime you can imagine how much cartridges we use in Nigeria.” He added that the cartridge business in Nigeria is “quite huge” and so the decision was made to set up the business there.
As well as having a licence to operate Cartridge World in Nigeria, the Kolade brothers were also given the master franchise rights, meaning that they “are the only company licensed to run a complete Cartridge World franchise in Nigeria. Anyone who wants to open a Cartridge World franchise in Nigeria will have to get the licence from us. They will open what we call a sub-franchise”. Olamide added that they plan to “open our own stores and sell sub-franchises as well. The parent company takes three percent of turnover”.
In terms of challenges presented by the Nigerian market, the issue of market research being difficult to access in the country means that the Kolades “have to go out there to scout for information” such as types of printers available and what cartridges they use. “In the industrialised world, things like these are taken for granted,” said Olamide. “There will be a bureau for printers where you can get whatever information you need on them.”
Availability of empties is another challenge for the business, with Damilola, Director of Operations,explaining: “[W]ithout these empties our operations will be stalled. So the main challenge that we have is sourcing empties. People treat empties like trash, they throw them away. In the process, some of them get damaged; some of them get completely dried up.
“So we have to use as many channels as possible to source for empties. It takes a longer time to process empties sourced from dustbins for reasons of contamination and drying up of ink and toner.”
However, there are “quite a lot” of companies that do not dispose of their empties, some of which sell them to brokers; with Damilola explaining that “there is a whole market structured around that”.
Both brothers studied at universities in Europe, with Olamide studying International Business at Schiller International University, Paris and gaining a second bachelors degree in Business Information at the University of Buckingham, UK; while Damilola studied Computer Engineering up to Masters level at the University of Nottingham, UK.