… If people like Pat Utomi are voted for as the president of this country I will be more than willing to be part of that government”
Mrs. Kofoworola Olaosebikan is your everyday woman. As the managing director of one of the foremost branding company in Nigeria and Africa, KOFSOL Concepts, she talks to EDIALE KINGSLEY about branding the Nation and how Education is the key to solving the problems.
You started this business? How?
Yes, I started and that was in the early eighties, and funny enough we started with tailoring. That was daily fashions, then, We were sewing for individuals and we found out that people will just come they do stuffs and when it's time to collect their jobs it becomes a big deal, may be they don't have the money and all sort of complains follow and so we decided to just go into uniforms, because with uniforms we would have volumes and keep busy, at the end of the day even if it is ten-ten naira in several places it is much more better than may be two hundred naira in one place and that you are going to really suffer before you get. So we went into Uniforms and off course while in that we had cause to brand them, you can't do uniforms for companies without branding and so the idea of branding crept in and like they say, the rest is history.
Your staff strength?
Actually, KOFSOL is a group of companies as it were, we are trying to build a conglomerate by the grace of God, and we pray that He sustains us. We have the precise cleaning services, kofsol concepts Nig Ltd.; that's the one that does branding, and we have daily fashions/uniforms and badges-and this is the part that handles the uniforms, badges and our off the rack labels. So, looking at the staff strength we must first understand our policies, we don't staff everybody, we have contract staff especially for kofsol, what we do is, if we have a lot of jobs to do, we bring in trusted hands that we know. We have also departmentalized in sessions, we have the monogramy sessions, the tailoring session, the mono print session, the computer, the screen printing session, etc, what we have done is employ like three people in each of the departments just to keep us going, and that's up to 20. But when we have jobs like in the printing session for instance, we bring in hands we can trust in that session. So on a project we are sometimes 20 and sometimes 100 depends on the project.
You seem to cut down your overheads and production costs?
Actually that's what the wal-mart in the US does, what they do is to cut down the over heads, the founder pays more attention on how their goods are produced more than how they are sold, and that's major. If you are able to cut your costs then your selling price will be lowered and then you have competitive advantage. Even though you are producing quality stuff people still get amazed on how the sell for such ridiculously low prices. Especially in Nigeria, people can be so wasteful, so you start to lower your staff costs. The more they are in Nigeria, the worst they become, that's what I have learnt. If you have four persons in a session in Nigeria, rather than have production increased, you will have dwindled productivity because they will go there to gist, cheat, steal, kill and destroy. But if you have one person there, give this person the target this is what you must produce for me every day. You will get that done easily than having so many people there. So I just looked at the business model of Wal-Mart and adopted it.
You pass as a good manager, any plan to help brand Nigeria, any plan to go into politics?
Not at all, Well we are all political animals. I am very political, without which I would even be in business, to know what is going around me and to take certain business decision. The truth is we are not yet ready for the people who are ready to work. If you are ready to work and you enter the Nigerian politics, you have just gone there to waste your time. When I say that, people always tell me we have to start from somewhere but then it is also up to the people that you want to “help”, like if you go into government and you are now working well, you are not really helping anybody as such. You are working for yourself and for the generations through you. then you see how we celebrate mediocre, because we vote people who give us money and who so ever is giving me money to vote for him is doing business and when he gets there he will just keep stealing, but if somebody like Pat Utomi who has refused to give money for votes, he came and we rejected him, it shows we are not ready. And until the people are ready nobody can force the people to do anything. If people like Pat are voted for as the president of this country I will be more than willing to be part of that government because then I know we are ready to do something, we are going somewhere, all our efforts won't be in vain. Then I know even if I make money from my business and they say put it in for the government, I know it's for the just course and not because somebody wants t steal the money, that can actually happen and you can help the government of the day, but the way they are running the government now, it becomes difficult to support, because you are not really sure where your money is going to. That makes politics in Nigeria very unattractive to people like us.
You must be very busy, how do you cope, without P.As? Any HR challenge?
In business, HR has been my major challenge, but it shouldn't be. I now look at myself as the problem. Really, like perhaps people can't catch up with my pace. For instance you asked about PA and I don't think I will ever have or be able to use one, cause the PA is suppose to mimic me, a PA is a mini me, someone who should be able to do what I do or at a bit lower. It will be hard to see that kind of person. Not because what I am doing is extraordinary but the simple fact that people are just lazy. They can't get up and go, they lack initiative and maybe I should generalize perhaps its safe to say I have not seen them, but I have been on the lookout for them, so it gets to me that people that I have seen to be entrepreneurs with the same productivity level like me all have challenges with HR.I think it's the Educational system, that is all rotten and gone all sour and bad. We need a change in that sector?
We would have to turn to people like you for such change, don't you think so?
But they don't give such people the mandate and chance to lead. When Professor Fafunwa was in charge of education, you saw improvement, because he is a professor and professor of those days is not the one of buy and sell they are doing these days. You don't just get professorial degree just like that. So if somebody like that is placed there we can expect result, these days I don't even know the people we put there. Sometimes, you just look at them, the whole of them and you are wondering like the minister of petrol, I learnt is an Architect. Does it mean we don't have petroleum engineers? Why do they keep rotating the same set of people, why? And until we change this quota system we may not make a head way. If we have ten good heads from the north with good results, let it be. In as much as we have productivity, that's fine. Not because we must get from each state, and so any idiots that we get we position there. These are all the things that are drawing us back. We have to look into the educational sector and ask where we went wrong; I don't think we are looking it that way. These days, students' go to school to buy only hand outs, they don't even know how a lab looks like and they have gone in and out, studied sciences. Some of them studied medicines and they have never seen a cadaver before, they have not even dissected an insect before and these are the people you are going to give your life to on a table for surgery. These are the things the government needs to look at and if you educate a nation everything will be okay. Even if it's now going wrong, we will have people that can think.
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