Mr. Michael Ezeaju, managing director/CEO Swisstrade Nigeria Limited, a security door company, in this interview with BUSINESSWORLD, relates his experiences as an entrepreneur in Nigeria and counsels on the way forward for the Nigerian economy.
Background
I was brought up in an environment that held learning and the civil service in high esteem. We didn’t have business background as there was no businessman in my family. However, I had an uncle that operated a supermarket in Enugu. When I was in the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT) Enugu, I spent my holidays with this uncle of mine and helped him in the supermarket. At a point I saw my self developing interest in business, not necessarily because of the money that it brings, I just loved helping people get solution to their needs. So when I graduated from IMT, I decided to set up a kerosene business in my village. I took money from my mum, she didn’t know what I was going to do with the money, but she gave me and I used it to construct a 100 litre tank. It wasn’t a strong construction at a point so it fell and the contents wasted. At that time, I mounted the tank near our market place and wrote on it ‘Kerosene for sale.’ Nobody from my family knew that I was into that business, in fact they even bought from me without knowing it.
At a point I felt it was a waste of time so I stopped and then went to the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) where I read economics and from there I traveled abroad.
From the beginning I have always wanted to do something that will make people come to patronize me. It is not necessarily the money but the joy of providing service to people. At the time I was selling kerosene, I was so happy. The day the tank fell, my pain was not that I had lost money, but that my customers would be disappointed when they come asking for kerosene and had none.
 
Venture into security door business
I spent some time in Switzerland. I did some programme there, that is where I met my wife. This company is a Swiss company. I did part time work with them while I was in school. So when I finished my studies I decided to work with them and when I was coming back to Nigeria, I decided to set it up here as a franchise but we are the owners in Nigeria.
When I came back, I opened a business on security doors. Before we came up with this, Nigerians do not know what is security door. They only use burglary-proof which is iron placed at the back of doors to provide security. So we introduced security doors in Nigeria. Since we took off it has been a success story and we have expanded into other security services and products like camera and other licenced security equipments. Our main customers are Kirikiri prisons most of the banks as well as other individuals who use our doors for their private houses. People are even demanding that we should have something for windows but we told them that we are not ready to go into that now.
 
Initial challenges
Of course we had our fair share of challenges when we were taking off. First I found it difficult to register the business as a security company because I am not a security professional. That is one of the requirements for registering a security company, one of the promoters must have been a military or police officer. I told my uncle who introduced me to a military officer who eventually became one of the directors. Besides that, this was a new line of business in Nigeria then, so nobody gave us a chance, even the military man himself was skeptical about the prospects of the business. Patronage at the take off was very low, in fact I would say the first four to five months we didn’t make a single sale and we were incurring expenses. At a point I was asking myself ‘what is it that is still keeping me in this business?’  
At that time engineers, architects and others involved in the building business knew nothing about security doors; the price was another issue. So it wasn’t a rosy take off. We had to invest so much in advertisements, employ many marketers some of whom disappeared with the money and doors given to them as samples. We started with about 300 pieces of doors which cost about N85 million that was about 12 years ago and you stock the goods, nobody is coming to buy, that is tying your money down.
What did we do? We started having monthly seminars and workshops with architects so we can educate them on the value of the new door technology. We also created a credit line just to let people see what it will look like when fixed. Sometimes we supply and fix the doors free so that the owner will see it and if satisfied, pay us later. That helped because when people began to see the door on people’s houses, they began to make enquiries and we started getting referrals. There were also some risks we had to bear because there were some people we gave the doors and we never saw them again. We didn’t know that it was build and sell. So as soon as they sold, they disappeared.
It was a rough time, one door in four months and you keep on paying salaries, people keep on coming to work, cleaning the doors, having faith that it will change like it has changed today. Yes many other people are into the business now, but before they came in and even now people are trooping to our showrooms to purchase or even buy online.

 The turning point
Things began to improve gradually three and half years after we took off when we started working with corporate organizations like banks and others. They promoted us very well because a lot of people got to know us through them. The next challenge was the issue of price, they were asking can you bring down your price. Honestly things have improved but we are not there yet, we are still facing some challenges which is part of every day life.
 
Source
We are doing full importation now but we have some machines which we use to treat some doors that have need for repair. This is basically when there is damage when a customer is attacked by criminals. We can recode the door for the customer free but where the damage is extensive; we may charge a little thing just to cover costs.
 
How the doors work
Yes we all believe in God and believe that God is protecting us. But then, that is not the reason you will not protect yourself. Security door has its role in ensuring that an individual or a family or even an organization is well protected. It protects you from an intruder. Someone cannot forcefully enter your house without your permission, your key should not be easily duplicated like any other key even if you leave it carelessly. The door is of different categories, so also is their prices. We have doors of N85,000 minimum and another one of the same size going for N1.5 million. We have those that are bullet-proof or bullet resistant. These make sure nobody shoots through your door to you. The ones we sell to banks is N450,000 or N500,000 depending on what they want to use it for.
We usually ask customers what they want to use the door for. For ordinary private residence, that of N85,000 will do the job, it may not resist AK47 but it will resist pump action and pocket gun. 
So we have categories for it, it depends on the one you want. But ordinarily, even the lowest category of any security door must be able to protect you.
 
The Nigerian business environment
Doing business in Nigeria is not a tea party, but that should not discourage any body. What we are saying is that there are a lot of things the government needs to do to make Nigeria more business friendly so that doing business in Nigeria will be as easy as registering it. Look at the issue of energy, every businessman in Nigeria will tell you that if the problem of power is solved, you would have solved about 90 per cent of their problems. You can’t run a company on generator.
In my own case, I need electricity 24 hours because if there is no power nobody will see what I am displaying during the day and at night nobody will see my signboard to come back the next day and make enquiry. I have two generators here running almost throughout the day with high cost of diesel. Mine is even a small case, what about those that run factories or cold rooms in which case their generators must be on for 24 hours. The thing is killing my brother. That is why some businesses are considering going to Ghana and you won’t blame them.
Government is also not helping investors even to have easy means of publicizing their products and services. About four months ago we were trying to erect billboards in Abuja but we couldn’t do that. Government officials were just tossing us about as if they were paid to frustrate us. Lagos is the same thing, last year just two days after paying for billboard Lekki Concession Company (LCC) took it down, saying Fashola said they should remove it. These are some of the things we are talking of. Yes people say Nigeria is a land of opportunities. Yes I agree, but there are lots of things that need to be put in place to help businessmen do their business with minimal stress.
 
Expansion plans
At the moment we are operating in Lagos we have three showrooms, namely Magodo, Festac and the head office here in Lekki. We are also operating in Abuja and Enugu. Our office in Port Harcourt is run by an agent. This year we will hit Port Harcourt full time. We will also establish an office in Ghana. We are also looking at places like Bayelsa, Ibadan and Kano to cover the north. We want to get closer to the people because they are complaining that they find it difficult to come here to buy, so we want to reach them at their closest point.
 
Support from the banks
We have never borrowed and we are not about to borrow. For now we are not looking for loans, that is not our major headache. Our problem now is getting the right workforce, people you can trust with this kind of product. This is a high profile product and we deal with a lot of high profile people. This is a product that someone can come in and drop four million naira because we are in a cash economy nation. How are you sure the man or lady who receives that for us will not disappear the next moment? Because of the possibility of getting the wrong personnel, we are afraid of expanding speedily as we would have wanted otherwise we will end up crashing. So presently we are working on the people that will work with us to make sure they are people of integrity.
 
Competition
For me I am happy when there is competition because that is what will encourage efficiency and it protects the end user. We have many people now in this kind of business in Nigeria, but I can say that we are still miles ahead of them and we will continue to be a benchmark for competitors. You see, competition can only be fierce if you are competing with a similar, if not the same product and of the same quality. But when you are competing with the same product but a different quality, you will still see the person with a higher quality having a monopoly and that is what we are in this market. We are more of a monopoly. This is not a Chinese door, it is not Dubai or Turkey. We have had cases where people come to us to request that we remove the door that they had already fixed in order to fix our own. They discovered that the door they had earlier fixed is fake. So we are still having a monopoly so to speak. Yes there is competition but we would even be happy if it can increase because it will help us to keep on re-strategising and re-modernising this door for the good of the end user.