By Prudence Minayo
Christine Mutua is the founder of Amazing Pure, a business that sells honey, peanut butter and breakfast meals. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she worked for an insurance company as an administrator. Choosing the entrepreneurial route was not easy as she has faced a number of challenges. However, she told Nation, that this was one journey that has made her happier and contented.
Starting the business
They say starting is the most important aspect of any venture: and like many entrepreneurs Mutua ‘started small.’ The business started out of homemade peanut butter in 2015. She bought peanut butter, processed it and packed it into ten 800 grams labelled jars.
She told herself that if they failed to sell, they will be used by the family. Selling them at between Sh150 to Sh180, she sold out within a week. Then, people started
asking if she had honey. Thus, she sourced honey from Baringo and sold it to her customers.
With time, she started her own apiaries in Kitui and Machakos. In an interview with Daily Nation on May 2022, she revealed that by that time she had a total of eighty hives.
Taking lessons
When the pandemic struck, her sales took a downward spiral and she had to pick up important lessons especially with diversifying.
She was necessitated to undertake baking classes at Aggy’s Bakeries. She learnt how to make bread, meat pies, cakes, croissants, and pastries. She also went
through other classes and learnt to make ice cream, yoghurt and milk shakes.
All this was to enable her expand the business. To cushion herself from the unpredictable prices of raw materials, she maintains a specific price.
Challenges
One of the major challenges she faced at the beginning was allowing clients to order without clearing their past debts. This was because she did not want to seem too forceful and in the end it led to a lot of losses. Most of the time, she had to keep the business afloat using her personal finances.
“This nearly collapsed my business. I had to constantly go back to my pocket to keep the business running,” she told Nation.Africa.
Another challenge was that she was hesitant about marketing the products as she was not sure how they would be received. Then, there were times she went without clients, only selling a kilo of honey for months.
