Entrepreneur stumbles on unique way to sell

When Murori Kiunga first launched his tiny book publishing business he was pretty confident about the quality and content in his books and so he distributed them in leading bookshops and waited for sales to take off. Nothing happened.

Weeks later it dawned on him that not too many people usually visit book shops looking to purchase inspirational books. So his next step was to place an advertisement in the daily newspapers which he did and rubbed his hands in anticipation waiting for the huge response he knew would have to come. And he really needed it to cover the cost of the rather costly advertisement and give him a good return for the book he was selling. He was no novice in the field of newspaper advertising having worked as an advertising sales representative for the Daily
Nation for a number of years before going into business and had seen numerous clients get a huge response from advertising in the daily newspapers.

But again it ended in disappointment. Nothing happened and at the end of the day he had hardly received any enquiries; his pile of books remained unsold, gathering dust in his small office along Moi Avenue, Nairobi.

Many business people would have thrown in the towel at this point and done something else, but luckily Kiunga did not give up and decided instead to think out of the box and to try some unorthodox methods of selling. And that was when he stumbled onto a breakthrough of sorts.

"I went to a small seminar in Nyeri and sold Kshs 15,000 worth of books within a very short time," Kiunga remembers. This excited him tremendously and to date he still uses every seminar he can get to as an opportunity to sell. That is how Kiunga's Queenex Holding Ltd has been marketing and selling. But last month the determined entrepreneur discovered yet another new way of depleting his stocks while fattening his bank account balance. Kiunga had experimented with flyers before
but this time he got serious and printed thousands of small A6 full colour flyers.

The biggest challenge was of course distributing them. Those with marketing experience are well aware of the fact that by far the most important thing in any promotion effort is to reach your targeted audience. He explains how he has been organizing distribution in commuter vehicles early every morning to reach people going to work.

"The people commuting between 5 am and 6:30 am are mostly security guards, messengers and cleaners. Those are not the people I am looking for to buy my books." Kiunga explains that his prime targets are office workers who commute between 7 and 7:45 am. And that is the time when he concentrates all efforts on distributing his flyers in commuter vehicles coming into the city from various estates and suburbs.

So successful has his this distribution of handbills been that he usually gets several orders on a daily basis to deliver directly to clients who request the books. He has even had enquiries from places as far off as Kisumu.

Flyers or handbills are no doubt effective enough methods of advertising a business these days, if Kiunga's experiences are anything to go by. Just the kind of thing that would save numerous
small and medium sized businesses that are at this very time struggling just to survive and cannot seem to get enough clients to do so.