Abdullahi Bulle, the founder of Nuria Bookstore, who bet big on self-published authors, always has a thirst for entrepreneurship. Even while working at Chase Bank, a job that he got immediately after completing his undergraduate studies, and rising to the rank of credit manager, he had a side hustle. He was comfortably employed, with good pay, but he went into a motor vehicle spare parts business, running a shop alongside other side-hustles.
Unfortunately, the businesses failed, and Mr Bulle has extra time on his hands. He decided to advance his studies, and along the way, he developed a strong reading habit, including during lunch breaks at work, which his colleagues noticed.
‘They were borrowing my books, seeking book recommendations, and one of them wondered why I was gifting free books instead of selling. That challenged me, but since I had the trauma of previous business failures, I could not jump into the business of selling books blindly,’ says Mr Bulle.
Armed with his go-to-market strategy research report, Mr Bulle discovered that online book space was nonexistent and decided to start an online book platform.
He looked for a web developer, but unfortunately, could not find a good one locally. He got a US-based one, who took advantage of his little IT knowledge to overcharge for the services at Sh400,000.
Mr Bulle says that after ordering books worth Sh125,000 from the UK in 2016, he realised that the website was not really meeting his expectations and made a painful decision of abandoning it altogether and developed a new one from scratch at an extra cost.
‘The first year was tough and challenging because in the same year, my bank was put under receivership with all my savings, though we still managed to sell some of the books,’ he says.
When the books business started picking up well, Mr Bulle finally quit employment in 2018. He decided to set up a physical store, tucked on the first floor of the Bazaar Building along Nairobi’s busy Moi Avenue.
Unlike other big bookshops, his is surrounded by mobile phone dealers, clothing, and the likes, but is gradually gaining a share of the market.
His strong focus on local self-published books, which had been avoided by top bookstores, started paying off. By the end of that year, he had onboarded five Kenyan authors, who have now grown to 2,650.
Self-published authors are authors who do not go through the mainstream publishers, so, if you have a ready manuscript, Nuria Bookstore links the author to an editor, book designer, and once it is ready, the author buys the barcode from Kenya National Library Services at a cost of Sh1,500, then brings the book for sale.
‘Compared to other bookshops which do not stock authors without brand names, we enable them [self-published authors] to crack the market without having to go through the mainstream publishers,’ he adds.
The hard part
The ex-banker says that the biggest challenge he has had to contend with and still do is marketing self-published books because ordinarily, most bookshops reserve their shelves for fast-moving books, which makes business sense.
However, the good thing at first it was an online platform, therefore operational expenses were low. Online also gave them a bigger reach and visibility. All they needed was to pick and deliver whenever a buyer placed an order, which worked well during the early years.
‘The other issue was how long the books would stay in the store, so we invested heavily in online marketing even though online and social media as a marketing medium wasn’t popular then,’ recalls Mr Bulle.
As a book seller, he adds that the other challenge is stock theft or stock loss, which leads to serious cashflow problems, hence the reason he prefers hiring staff based on honesty and not just academic papers.
He says that it has helped the bookseller a lot in managing cash flow and paying suppliers on time, thus bridging the finance load.
‘Setting up a bookshop in prime locations like the Central Business District or high-end shopping malls is expensive in terms of rent space. Content creation around books is equally higher than other products,’ he adds.
How much he earns
He says that, as a bookseller just like others, he takes 30 percent commission on any book sold, inclusive of 16 percent, but Nuria Bookstore has a unique approach of a pay-as-we-sell model with a decentralised vendor platform, a first in Africa.
‘As an author or publisher, you register as a vendor on the platform, upload the book, and every time a customer visits the link and orders a book, you get a real-time notification, and once delivery is completed, money is reflected in your account/vendor portal immediately,’ he explains.
Despite the impressive growth, Mr Bulle says expansion was not easy due to limited resources despite of making a pitch to nine potential investors between 2016 and 2021.
‘They all rejected me, so he abandoned that approach after realising that not every investor understands the book-selling business. Book selling is a volume business, not a high margin one, yet the majority want high quick returns. Two, due to the low reading culture in our society, they understand that market dynamic and are unwilling to wait for many years for returns,’ he adds.
He cites an example of Amazon, which took 10 years to break-even but was continuously backed by investors and is presently the biggest e-commerce company in the world.
Risks to the business
Mr Bulle says the biggest risk, not just to his business but other book sellers as well, are pirated books and online PDF copies that don the streets, aided by the fact that most of buyers are price driven, not value-driven, and are unethical.
He says that focusing on promoting African books has worked in their favor compared to other bookstores.
‘We have also given life to books that are over 70 years old that were lying in publishers’ warehouses, and Kenyans can now identify Nuria as the go-to African books store,’ says Mr Bulle.
Regrets
If there is one regret he has had is the inability to raise funds early enough for expansion, as he was a bit worried about losing control over the business.
‘I did not open up myself earlier enough to banks to help me grow the business. That lack of boldness held me back,’ says Mr Bulle is looking at setting up a new branch in Nyali, Mombasa.
He encourages entrepreneurs with good ideas or with a business that is doing well to borrow money and payback as quickly as possible because the biggest challenge to the growth of a business is usually raising equity or debt capital.
‘In 2016, I needed around Sh5 million. In 2021, when I stopped pitching, I probably needed Sh50 million, and if I were to raise money now, it could be between Sh100 to Sh200 million, but the business is now self-lubricating,’ he says.
Mr Bulle clarifies that the problem with most investors is that they need a ‘massage presentation’ during a pitch or a tried and tested concept with a fixed timeline on return on investment, something he couldn’t promise prospective investors.
‘This is partly the reason some startups collapse. They probably sold ‘lies and being liquid during early years brings growth, but that becomes unsustainable in the long term,’ adds Mr Bulle.