Empires are not built in a day. Tuskys took about 40 years.
But in just a few months, a multi-billion-shilling dream jump-started with just Sh7,000 now lies in ruins.
For Kenya’s supermarket business , it appears there are no fairy tale endings.
And in the aftermath of Tuskys Supermarket’s collapse, multiple small businesses, thousands of jobs and livelihoods relying on the retailer’s ecosystem have also suffered.
Sometime in the 1980s, Joram Kamau, a village shopkeeper, took his bull to an open-air market in Rongai, Nakuru County. Read More
The bull fetched Sh7,000 and upon that rock Tuskys was founded.
After decades of sheer grit, Kamau’s vision thrived and Tuskys perfected its model of “selling to the poor.”
At the beginning of the year, it was Kenya’s largest supermarket with over 50 branches stretching to even Uganda and attracting almost two million shoppers a month.
Now, the family jewel has only a few soulless branches that would be lucky to register even the Sh7,000 startup capital in a day. Roped in sons
The reality of the collapse came recently when the supermarket shut its Magic Stores outlet in Nakuru. It was the oldest store, which opened in 1983 when Tuskys started expanding.
The branch made the Kamaus the first indigenous African family to own such a self-service store in Nakuru.From the onset, Kamau roped his sons into the business where they began working after high school.The larger family seems to have found its calling in supermarkets with Kamau helping his brother’s children start Naivas, now Kenya’s largest supermarket chain. It opened its 69th branch on Friday.In a previous interview with this writer, Naivas co-founder and managing director David Mukuha, while appreciating the special links with Tuskys, said that even if they wanted to, they could not bail out their cousins.This is because Naivas is no longer a family business, having sold a 30 per cent stake to a consortium of investors to raise Sh6 billion that has propelled the business and boosted corporate governance.“The problem right now is that Naivas is not a family business. I have the other partner who wouldn’t support me to help (Tuskys) because they are competitors,” Mukuha said.“Had it been the other way round, as a family I could have done it but right now as we are, I’m controlled by the board.”Both supermarkets have at some point been rocked by bitter family disputes. Naivas managed to resolve its family issues, helped by […]