How To Make 200,000 Per Month From Second hand Suits

Many young people in Kenya who have gone to school still wear off their shoes as they try to look for white collar jobs.

Jobs, especially in Kenya have become extremely hard to come by, leaving many learned young people desperate, hopeless with nothing to fall back to.

The business of trading in secondhand clothes is as old as one can remember in Kenya. The business has been thriving for decades though there are fears that it may be done away with by the year 2018. Many young people, especially the learned ones, have shunned away from this business, terming it the business of the lowly, of the illiterate and of the hopeless.

One young man is changing this notion. He is making a living from the business, and not just a living but making up to 200,000 shillings per month from the sale of the clothes.

Meet Rufus Kato Omusaja, a 25 year old Ugandan national who came to Kenya in search of a job two years ago. When he arrived in Kenya, the reality hit him that they were thousands of other Kenyan youth who were even more desperate for a job than him. For more than  six months, he could not get a job.

One day, while walking on the streets of Nairobi, he noticed a shop that was selling secondhand suits. The suits were going between 2000 to 2500 shillings. Rufus then remembered that secondhand suits were cheaper in Uganda than they are in Kenya. After some brief consultations, he decided to give the business a try.

“One bail of secondhand suits goes for 25 thousand Kenyan shillings in Uganda. I sold everything I had including my phone and went to purchase the first batch,” he said during an interview in his rented hostel.

He says when he opened the bail, it contained 76 suits. He approached one vendor in Nairobi and agreed to supply him suits at the price of 1000 per suit. He got three vendors.

“At first they could not believe but when I delivered to the first vendor, they did. I now have more than 8 customers. I deliver between eight and 10 bails per month making roughly 30 to 40 thousand shillings per each bail,” he said.

At the moment, Rufus has built a semi-permanent house back home in Tororo Uganda and his two sisters are back to college after they had quit due to lack of school fees.

Read: Lucrative Business Ideas People Tend to Ignore

Lessons for Kenyan Youth

Rufus came to Kenya, saw an opportunity that has been there, utilized it and now he is conquering the world of business. Opportunities don’t need to come in bright colors for them to be opportunities to be embraced. Remember the business of doing business is serious business.

Last Word

As I stood to leave, these were Rufus’ last words, “You may be on the tight highway to success but if you just sit there, you will get run over. Keep on moving.”