Starting a business is hard. Starting it without your family’s support is even harder.

In 2021, Emma Achieng opened her business Haven Wallpapers and Interiors. It's not that her family wasn’t supportive of the idea; entrepreneurship was a foreign concept to them because employment was all they knew.

“No one in our family has ever been in business. When I ventured into entrepreneurship, my dad said, 'This is for Kikuyus and Somalis? Don't go into business. Business is hard. You won't make it.' My father and my uncles were employed. No one in our family has an entrepreneurial background, so I didn't have a blueprint to follow,” Emma says.

Emma graduated with an agribusiness degree. But after a 6-month internship, job prospects were slim.

Soon after, a friend invited her to join her in her interior design business, where they sold household decorations. But after some time in the interior décor business, Emma saw a better business opportunity in wallpapers.

The only problem was the misconception that installing wallpapers was expensive and that they couldn't be installed in rental houses.

“People were shying away from decorating rentals, and you would hear phrases like Siezi tengeneza nyumba sijajenga. That you cannot decorate a landlord’s house. Another misconception was that decorating your house is so expensive that it's a luxury. But the products I was venturing into are rental-friendly,” Emma says.

Having already fallen in love with the idea, she took time to persuade and educate customers that she offered quality products; they would be professionally installed and removed when moving out, without damaging the surfaces.

And that’s how she ventured into her own business.

But like every small business, Emma struggled with cash flow. When she started as a broker, she didn’t have the money to buy her own stock, so she couldn't afford to pay suppliers.

Her solution was therefore to build trust and strong relationships with suppliers. But first, she made sure she always paid on time, so that when she had big projects, she could rely on the trust she’d built and obtain goods on credit.

Her proudest moment in the business, though, besides gradually building a quality team of reliable staff, was opening her first physical location.

“My first milestone was having a physical location. When I started as a broker, I did not have a shop; I operated mostly online. That milestone will forever be in my heart,” she says proudly.

As the business grew, Emma realised she needed to manage money better, especially as her projects improved and she needed even more credit to take them on.

She therefore opened a till for customer payments. The till also helped build trust, as customers saw they were paying Haven Wallpapers and Interiors.

“I made sure customers were paying through the till. This one built my credit. So when it came time to import my own products, the first person I went to was KCB because I had taken my time to open the till and put money there, so that I could prove to the bank that I could finance the loan they were going to give me,” she says.

Emma is also a KCB Biashara Club member, a business networking platform KCB Bank created to support SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Through the club, Emma has travelled to Malaysia and China, where she met her suppliers, whom she had previously interacted with only online. She also attends weekly webinars where members are trained on various topics that aim to help them run their businesses better.

“KCB Biashara Club really helped me strengthen my relationship with my suppliers because I was operating online and ordering online, and payment had to go through. Using my normal KCB account, I could go to the teller, fill in the SWIFT form, and transfer money to my suppliers while I was still in Kenya, with no conversion fees. If you pay through Alibaba, there's a conversion fee,” Emma explains.

As an entrepreneur thriving in an industry she didn’t train for, Emma offers this advice to young girls pursuing courses they are not passionate about.

“Take your education seriously. It's not about the education per se; it's about the network, the connections, the partnerships, and the relationships you will build while you're in school, because it is a small part of real life. And don't be discouraged. I studied agribusiness, but now I am doing interior design. No manual will ever prepare you enough for business. You just must be in business to learn.” She says.