Exclusive: Instability Of Economy Is Affecting Our Business -Emefizzy
By Olusegun HOSEA, 25th October, 2024.
The problem of unemployment does not in anyway affect some of the Youths in our society as they have decided to create a good brand niche for themselves in order to overcome the challenges of unemployment facing the Youths in the country. The case of Victor Emefizzy an Entrepreneur per excellent whose major business focuses on the production of Popcorn in Akure, Ondo State has said that the instability of the economy has affected his business in terms of high price of transportation of their raw materials used for the production of the Popcorn business. In an exclusive interview with Exponent News today in his office in Akure, Victor said the cost of transportation of the major raw material which is corn that he uses for the production of the popcorn from the Northern part of the country had increased and this, according to him have affected the price of selling the product.
He said recently they have their goods stocked in the north now due to the increase in the cost of transportation. He explained that before, a bag of corn was being carried at the cost of N4000 as at April/may this year 2024. But as at yesterday, the Driver was telling us that the list he could carried a bag of corn was N9000 per bag. He said just two weeks ago, they uploaded some of their raw materials from the same north was uploaded at the rate of seven thousand naira ( N7000) per bag, which was expensive as at that time and that they even complained about it then. But just two weeks in between now, they are being asked to pay nine thousand naira per bag and these are some of the challenges they faced as a business man.
In another development, Victor said he has not received any financial assistance from government since started the business since 2018 till date that all what he had been using was his personal resources. His words “we are not getting any support from the government at all, I have never gotten a dime from the government since I started this business”. But when asked if he intends to get any financial support from the government to support his business, Mr Victor had this to say “of course yes, nobody would say no to money or no to support. Everybody in business needs support, all kinds of support whether it’s physical or financial or emotional.” He said manufacturing is the hardest business one can venture into, most especially when it comes to this kind of business he’s doing, because manufacturing entails alot of things because there are so many people you need to satisfy because one is fighting as much as possible to retain his quality and at the same time trying to satisfy his customers in time of price.
Victor said the moment you begin to cut short the quality of production you begin to lose customers and sales at the same time, if you trying to increase the price, it would get to a point where the customers would out rightly refuse to buy and they would want to source for the product from other competitors in the market. He said of course if there was support either financially or otherwise from the government the business would boom more. Victor who did not totally believe in giving cast to some entrepreneur as they may mismage them. He said though money is important to run a business but everything is not all about money as there are some other support government could give to the entrepreneurs without having to hand over money to them. Government could provide an enabling environment for the entrepreneur business to strive as a way of support given to them. He was of the opinion that having a stable economy is even more much better than the government giving out money to the entrepreneur business because the heart of production is very important.
Similarly, Victor was of the opinion that the inability of the stable economy in the country had made them to increase the price of their goods in the last couple of the months due to the cost of the transportation of the materials from the North. As their customers had fixed their minds on the particular price which they used to buy the product but if the price changes they would not buy it as they would been disappointed and if the extra money is not available with them, they may end up not buying the goods. Therefore, a stable economy is very important to an entrepreneur in a situation like this.
When asked how many bags was used in the production of the popcorn? He said currently he uses two bags per day in the Akure branch for the production as the economy was bad for now. He said there were times they used more than two bags per day, like five bags when the economy was okay two years ago and people were even queuing to get their products around five o clock in the morning to write their names down to get their products the next day, but now the economy had affected their sales. He said they have Branch in Ibadan, Akure and Kaduna as their products come directly from Kaduna. He said he recently started a packaging company recently Popit Food as it’s fully registered with CAC. His brands name is Victor Efizzy.
