Over the years, houseplants have become increasingly popular among Nigerians, with more people digging the idea of incorporating plants into their house decor. Studies have shown that owning houseplants has several benefits, including improved mental and physical health, better air quality and the tendency to grow into a well-loved hobby.
Nigerian owned plant startup, Ekondo, is focused on making it easier for everyone to own plants. Founded in 2020, Ekondo is on a mission to make the world a greener place, one plant at a time. We sat down with them to discuss what it’s like to be a green economy-focused startup and the work they are doing as a nature-driven company.
What exactly is Ekondo?
I’ll call this version of Ekondo a plant company. Our job now is to make it easy for everybody to own a plant. We help you find a plant best suited for your space, we deliver it to you and then we give you tips on how to take care of it. We also connect you to a community of fellow plant lovers so you don’t always have to come to us for help, you could ask someone that you met at a party, or at an event that we organized and they could help you out.
Why did you pick the name Ekondo?
I had gone through a couple of names. Initially, I was going to call it Afro Merchant and I had already opened an Instagram page for Afro Merchant. At the time, it was more of a directory for African-inspired furniture businesses than a plant company. I ran Afro Merchant for a month, and then I began forming what would become Ekondo. I started bringing my co-founders together and explaining the vision to them, and why they needed to come on board. During our first meeting, they said the name Afro Merchant name had to go and I fought back because it took me so long to come up with the name. Then one afternoon, I was watching twelve years a slave and it hit me that Afro Merchant sounded like the name of a slave ship, and that ended there. I began going through a couple of names again, listed out the ones I liked, headed back to my co-founders, and told them what I had come up with. Ekondo was the top choice, so we went with it because it really fit the description of what we were trying to do which was build a community of homeowners using African-inspired decor pieces, so that made sense for us at the time, and the name just stuck.
What is Ekondo as a community?
As a community, we have fun! We are all about good vibes and good energy, we are trying to build an environment where people can come to relax. I used to think that people came for events because we gave out free plants, but I was shocked to discover that wasn’t why people came, it was really about the good vibes and the kind of energy that our events radiate. In May, we had our SouthSide festival, with so much good vibes, in July we had Play For Plants where people played different games to win plants and in December, we are returning with SouthSide 2.0. The people that make up the community are the reason a lot of people come back. People want somewhere they are listened to, where they are welcomed, a judgment free zone. When you come to an Ekondo event, you want to be here, it feels like you’re in the right space. The Ekondo community is a huge part of our success story, somehow everyone is always involved in the process so it feels like it belongs to all of us. We teach people to slow down over here, just like plants, because like it or not you can’t rush the process of growing plants. There’s something called The Framework Of Intention, coined by Akanka Design, our co-creators in building a nature-driven company, and that’s what we live by. There are three steps in the framework: slow down, give gratitude and take responsibility, which is basically what plants teach us to do.
When did Ekondo start? Do you remember your first sale?
We started working on it during the lockdown in 2020, it officially launched on June 30th. We were working to become a furniture company and we made our first mold for a pot and our first table, brought them back to the house and the legs were not the same length. The mold we got came apart as soon as I poured cement inside to cast the first pot. Before the lockdown, I used to make leather shoes and bags and my friend Jane hit me up to say she was trying to get a gift for her friend whose birthday was coming up in a month. I told her not to worry, I was working on something new that was going to blow her mind, and it wasn’t going to be slippers. I told her to call me a week before her friend’s birthday. Two weeks before her friend’s birthday, Jane called me and I realized I had absolutely nothing ready. I had been doing a couple of experiments, trying out a couple of materials to see what worked best for plants, I needed a material that didn’t absorb water, and eventually, I was successful. I delivered the plant to Jane’s friend in time for her birthday and the smile on her face was literally radiating. I couldn’t believe how excited she was. I went to deliver it with one of my co-founders and my cousin who reminded me to take a photo of how happy she looked and I immediately did. I sent the photo to Jane, who was also very happy. I couldn’t understand it then, but later on, I realized that plants really make people happy. After that, we became a business.
How do you source your plants?
Our plants come from gardeners in Abuja, roadside gardeners mostly. Before us, the process of buying plants was very time-consuming and labour-intensive. Typically, if you wanted to get a plant, you’d have to find a gardener on the road, go to him, and tell him the exact plant you want to get because he doesn’t even know how to recommend a plant to you. The plants are grown in sack bags, but nobody keeps plants in their living room inside sack bags right? So you buy a plant inside a sack bag, grown in soil that mostly stones, and then you have to transplant it into brown plastic pots which don’t exactly look good. We eliminate the stress of doing all this by purchasing the plants, bringing them to our nursery, and transplanting them into our soil which is better for the plants and we watch them grow. When you buy plants from our website, Instagram, or our physical store, we transplant them from our nursery into unique hand-painted pots that we make ourselves, then we send them to you with care cards, lighting, and watering guides. After the plants get delivered, we check up on you to find out how the plants are doing.
Did you always see yourself running Ekondo?
I studied Civil engineering and I was a practicing civil engineer for four years. Before I left Uni, I said I wasn’t going to practice civil engineering. My goal was always to work in McKinsey, KPMG, or any of the large business consulting firms, stay there for two years, get an MBA, and open this massive business, but it didn’t go that way. Today, my civil engineering background still comes into play in most of the structures we develop and most of the designs that we do. I know the size of the materials to use and their strength. I might not be involved hands-on, but project management knowledge helps a lot because we also work with businesses where we help them get plants, so I’m still able to provide engineering solutions around plants.
What’s the process like when working with bigger establishments that want plants in their space? Is it any different from what’s attainable with homeowners who are aspiring plant parents?
Typically, they give us a call, and tell us that they are trying to do up a space, and feel like they need plants in the space. So we go and check out the space, and we have a conversation about what you are trying to achieve. Once we’ve reached common ground, we give you a price quote and begin working with the plants we believe will do best in the space you have while still fitting your requirements. For the first month, we maintain the plants for you and are responsible for whatever happens to the plant for that first month. If there are any issues within the first month, we go as far as replacing them for you. After that, you can subscribe for plant maintenance on a monthly basis where we come in, and take care of your plants while you just enjoy the greenery. Some establishments also rent plants from us because they don’t want to commit to buying a plant, they prefer if the plants in their space change from time to time. We have a subscription plan for this type of customer where we come to their space weekly to take care of the plant and we come back in a few months to rotate the plant and switch it up so it’s a different plant.
What are some of the establishments you’ve worked with?
Arami Essentials in Lagos, we installed some plants for them and a concrete island there. Arami was one of my favorite projects to work on, I was here in Abuja but still got the work done in Lagos, it felt really good to work on that. We’ve also done work for Ventures Park in Abuja, basically, all the plants are from us, UAC headquarters in Lagos, and Le Château hotel in Calabar. We’ve also provided biophilic designs for workspaces in collaboration with architecture firms and interior design firms and done landscaping in collaboration with real estate and construction companies.
How did you choose your co-founders?
We started off as five co-founders and now we are like three because some people have gone on to do other things. One of my former co-founders, who has gone on to do his masters, went to the same university as I did and we had a conversation about the business. He’s into real estate and we talked about real estate in Nigeria, and he said if we are ever starting anything business related in Nigeria, we need to make it about real estate. After university, I moved to Abuja for NYSC and we became close so when I started developing the business, it was just right to hit him up. He also had the skill set I needed, whatever needs to be run, he would run it. There is Tosho, we also went to uni together, we had done a couple of businesses together while in university, just hustling together so it was easy for us to do things together.
What are some of the challenges that Ekondo has had to deal with?
I don’t think we’ve experienced so many problems, or maybe I’m just optimistic. The only problem I’d say we’ve experienced that really got to me was when FCDA came to demolish our workshop, just a couple of months after we built it. When we started Ekondo, we operated from my house for a few months before we moved to one of our co-founders’ houses. Then we moved to the boy’s quarters of another of our co-founders’ parents’ house, and to the workshop from there in May 2022. In August, FCDA comes and says they want to pass a water line under the workshop. After a lot of back and forth, we asked for compensation and they asked us how much we wanted. I said three million naira and the person we were speaking to just burst out laughing and told us they had thirty thousand naira to give us as compensation. It was so frustrating and they kept saying “it’s just flower,” my mind was blown. We’ve been working from a very small space since August, and even our business operations had to be cut down. We are currently working on a project for NNPC and it’s so inconvenient, we don’t have anywhere to keep our products, it’s been a mess but luckily, we are rebuilding the 2.0 version of the store. I like to find things to be grateful for in experiences so I’m thankful that now we are able to expand the space and we are rebuilding based on what we’ve learned from the previous structure we had. The demolition also forced us to slow down, relax and go over things again. Now we are ready to come back into business with a lot more vim. Another challenge would be the hike in prices of materials, when we started Ekondo, we were buying one bag of cement for 4,000 naira, now that same bag is 8,500 naira, more than double the price it was when we started. Because of the price hike, we also had to readjust our prices, even though we tried to wait it out as long as we could.
How do you manage to factor sustainability and recycling into the work that Ekondo does?
We throw a lot of parties, even outside the Ekondo community I throw a lot of parties, and my friends throw a lot of parties, which means we end up with a lot of bottles that would typically be thrown away. So we thought, instead of just tossing the bottles, we can use them to give back to the people that come for our parties and we began putting plants in the bottles. Since we started Ekondo, we noticed some problems that would prevent people from getting into the experience of plants and one of them is that people are scared of the plants they purchase dying. We also noticed that when people get plants, sometimes they feel like they don’t know enough and feel the need to ask for guidance regarding the plants. So when people come for our parties, we save the bottles from the parties and plant-specific plants that can grow in just water. These bottled plants are low maintenance because you don’t have to change the water very often. You also get to see the plants’ roots because they are in a bottle of water, and this is something that really excites a lot of people. When we host our community events, like Play For Plants, almost everyone goes home with a plant, all you have to do is participate and you get a plant. We try to gamify it in a bid to get plants to as many people as possible, we consider ourselves very nostalgic and as such, we try to make community events as fun as we can manage. Most times when people get one plant, that’s all it takes for them to want more, it kickstarts the process. We also save the red disposable cups from our parties and repot smaller plants into these red cups before transplanting them into actual pots.
What’s the minimum amount an Ekondo plant can be purchased for?
Right now, it’s 7,500 naira. However, we are looking into smaller, more affordable plants that cost around 3,000 naira because we are an inclusive community, and we want everyone to be able to afford plants.
Where do you see Ekondo in the next five years?
I didn’t see Ekondo here when I started two years ago, so it’ll be a bit hard to say this is where I want us to be in five years. But in the next five years, we want anyone in Africa to be able to order a plant and it’ll get to them with everything they need to know to care for that plant. I see the Ekondo community expanding and teaching people to be a lot more intentional about life.
What is the one thing Ekondo can do for the society that will make you feel more fulfilled?
In the next five years, I want to see more people from the Ekondo community get married. More seriously, I’d like more people to slow down and live an intentional life. I find that there’s very little love in our society these days and I’d really like it if, from just growing a plant or the connection that the community offers, more people start to love life more, and take more responsibility for themselves. I want to see more people happier because they’ve formed a strong connection to their roots, pun intended.