The business advice Nigerians need rarely comes from a boardroom. Seun Mallami, founder of Blvckhair, gave this advice from the wealth of experience she has gathered over the years texturising hair, writing orders in a notebook and answering DMs at midnight. She has successfully built that into a multi-million naira manufacturing and e-commerce company. Here’s advice she wishes more founders heard and implemented earlier.
1. Track These Three Things
Customer behaviour, inventory, and cash flow. These three systems stop businesses from leaking money. A basic website logging orders and customer profiles, an Excel sheet watching stock movement, and any tool showing the flow of money, in and out of the business. “The data you get from that is truly undervalued, especially in Nigeria, where we don’t take data seriously,” Seun said. They don’t have to be expensive. They just have to exist.
2. Cost-reflective Prices
Copying a competitor’s price without knowing your own numbers is guess work, and guess work keeps brands broke. Start with your actual costs, as regards production, logistics, overhead and marketing. Then factor in your customer type and leave room for inflation. “You don’t want to be that brand that’s always changing prices every other day,” Seun said. Buffer it in from the start.
3. Your Content Needs More Than One Function
Entertainment content gets traffic. Getting eyes on your page doesn’t mean getting money in your pocket — people who discover you through entertainment content are strangers, and strangers don’t buy on sight. For Seun Mallami, her fix is to use content pillars such as education, product information, behind-the-scenes and founder-led content. “Traffic is your cold audience. What that means is that they’re just eyes on your page. It doesn’t necessarily translate to sales.” Brands that only dance are doing one job, when they need to do more.
4. Build a Sales System
Urgent promotions spike demand but they don’t build a customer base. “If you only sell when you do the urgent ticket promos, I wouldn’t call that your customer base. That’s just a temporary spike in demand.” The framework Seun Mallami offers is to build consistent sales with consistent traffic. Consistent traffic comes from intentional content and marketing. A business that only sells with discounts doesn’t have customers. It has opportunists.
5. You Don’t Need Capital To Start
Dropshipping, affiliate marketing and made-to-order are all real business models.. Many “big” brands on Nigerian social media don’t carry stock. They produce when ordered. “Even I,” Seun said, “before my stock comes in sometimes, use AI to generate pictures. My sales team is using that to convert sales in the DM. We’re getting sales before the stock comes in.” The excuse of no capital is losing ground fast.
6. If You’re Broke, There Are Three Causes
Bad pricing that doesn’t cover real costs. Stocking up faster than your customers can buy, and dipping into company money before you understand your net. “For most average businesses, your net is no more than 20, 25%. So they see that cash flow, they see that money enter and they’re like, oh, I have money… then dip into it.” Seun says AI tools can help small businesses track this without paying for sophisticated software. But none of it matters if you’re not tracking anything to begin with.
7. Selling to Nigerians Still Works
Inflation is real, purchasing power is unstable, and logistics costs can eat into margins. But abandoning the local market isn’t the answer either. “Don’t abandon Nigeria, just try to think bigger than one market,” Seun advised.
Founders who are fixated on the USA and the UK underexplore other African markets, such as Kenya and Ghana, which can be very profitable. As a founder, you need to think in economies of scale, explore B2B and bundle products. The goal is bulky cash flow, not just sales volume.
Seun Mallami’s point across every advice she shared is the same. Structure isn’t something that you add when you grow. It’s what makes you grow.
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