Chijioke Obiora, is President, Indigenous Manufacturers and Dealers of Footwear Association (IMADIFA), Trade Fair, Lagos. In this interview with Medinat Kanabe, he speaks on the impact of coronavirus on the business climate.
“We import 85 percent of what we sell here from China except the ones we manufacture and buy from Aba or here in Lagos. Since the emergence of Covid 19 we have been suffering a lot. After the Chinese New Year we were waiting for them to resume so that we can start making our orders for new things as what we have are old and our customers want the new arrivals but we have not been able to do as they have stopped manufacturing.
“We don’t have new footwear’s, as such, nobody is coming to ask for the old ones; they feel that the old ones are outdated and no longer in fashion. Every fashion has a lifespan, some two weeks, some one month. So, if we don’t get new things, customers will not come.
“But we were thinking that by closing factories in China, sales would have picked up but it hasn’t as people are still waiting for new arrivals. My customers from the north and even from the Eastern part of Nigeria keep calling, asking me if I have any new thing and when I say no, they will become discouraged and go to the next person but they meet the same dead end and are still hoping that we will get new arrivals soon.
“It is slowing the sales of goods and making the market look scanty. The only people we see are the ones that have events and come around to buy one or two for their outing but those who are dealing in wholesales are not coming to buy. We thought that it is the economy and decided to wait until Easter period but we still don’t have sales.
“So, it is affecting us very well as we don’t have goods coming in and the one we have here, people are not buying because its either old design and it also looks like there is no money in circulation in Nigeria.
“Ordinarily, in a day those who sell in pairs make sales of close to N100, 000 but now for a week we may not even sell up to N13, 000. They are expected to sell as much as 80 pairs a day and those who sell in cartons are expected to sell as much as 30 cartons in a day which is about N400, 000 but they don’t sell up to one carton sometimes and all these does not include profit so in a day they may not make up to N1, 500.
“Right now, most of my colleagues are wondering how they will pay school fees, house rent and meet up with other responsibilities and we are about 1, 500 foot wear sellers in this market.
“The market dropped up to 75 percent that is why my association wants to go on with its plan to empower the local producers but again we found out that that will be difficult because most of the materials they use for locally made footwear are also imported because Nigeria doesn’t have factories that produce raw materials for locally made shoes except for rubber.
“Although there are some companies in Aba that produce soles, the leather to design the other part of it is not produced here. This has also made the prices of the local shoes expensive because if they finish the materials with them, they will not have more materials to keep producing.
“Even as we are laboring to encourage members to set up factories, we also know that the machines are going to be imported so we have a lot of worries in our hearts.”