Mathematician turns cosmetics producer

Twenty years ago, Ms Marion Busingye thought she wanted to get on top of her game in the corporate world. She also knew that she wanted to run her own business. The only thing this mathematician at heart did not know was that the shea nut tree, specially grown in northern Uganda for its oil, would be at the centre of her business.
In the early 1990s’, Ms Busingye had secured good education in the United Kingdom (UK) where she grew up. At the time, during her first graduation, jobs were few as the country was going through a recession. Fortunately, she found her small beginnings in the telecommunications industry where she worked for about four years. Having completed her Masters in Business Administration, she left the UK and returned to Uganda in 2000 as she felt she needed to go where opportunities were.
“I was basically head-hunted. I was already working in that area and there were positions coming up in Celtel so they offered me a position and I came back into it,” she says.
Around 2004, Ms Busingye took a break from the corporate world to get married, following a very consuming work experience at Celtel. Six months later, just before she was about to join the corporate world again, her husband who had developed interest in cinema suggested she manages his enterprise.
What was supposed to be a six months contract turned out to be 10 years of managing the once popular Cineplex cinema. After more than 10 years in the market, The Busingyes contemplated and later shut down the operations as cinema had become a hard sale due to weak regulations and the absence of cinema culture among Ugandans.
“The industry has declined a lot which is such a shame. The market conditions do not allow it to thrive, for example, you had four cinemas within a small market and then you have video libraries and film shacks everywhere. People are not going to easily pay for that cinema ticket,” she explains.
Location
Lessons were learnt. Despite the business failure, Ms Busingye looked at it with positivity. She says the location of one’s business became key as it can break or make the enterprise. She then understood that she needed to go to where the mass is if she was looking to get a high turnover.
In between all of this, Ms Busingye gave birth to twins and one of them was born with a mild case of eczema, a dry skin condition that makes skin red, scaly and itchy.
Thankfully Ms Busingye, was able to travel abroad once in a while and would pick medicine to treat her son’s condition since the Ugandan pharmaceutical industries had done very little in that area. However, she ran out of medicine at one point and her mother suggested she gave local shea butter an attempt.
“I said okay, let’s give it a try. We got the raw butter and within about two weeks, we noticed a huge difference in his skin. I tried it on the other child and they all had a glowing skin,” she says.
At that particular point, she made the realisation that Shea butter lacked the shape or form in which one would want to market it yet it was a fantastic product. The packaging did not look right too.
“I was like you know what? Somebody should be doing this,” she adds.
Ms Busingye held that thought for about a year as she was grappling with the challenges of running Cineplex cinema. Over the years, she had come up with various business ideas which she had never implemented and at this point, she decided to experiment with making her own cosmetics from organic Shea butter.
She grabbed a chance to undergo training at Uganda Institute of Research and Industry where she learnt how to do formulations for her product.
Starting out
Once Ms Busingye had the idea put together, she started from her kitchen until she created space in the backyard of her home which became her small laboratory.
“I was not sure of where I wanted this to go. So I started with about Shs100,000. It was like let me get a little bit of butter and see what I can do,” she says.
More so, natural products were starting to get on the market and she was cautious because the economy, in her opinion, had started to go into the recession its suffering today.
Slowly, she bought some preservatives from the UK, beeswax, avocado oil, coconut oil and shea butter from local suppliers. She also acquired basic equipment like a handheld mixer, stainless steel pans, a cooling system and disinfectants, sourced her packaging locally and built it from there.
Ms Busingye went on to hire an agency to help her develop a local feel of how the brand would look like. She produced a few 50 gramme tins from organic shea butter and placed them in her mother’s shop, while she gave other samples to her friends.
Within a few days, a customer had bought her products at her mother’s shop whereas within a few months, her friends had asked her to sell to them.
Now almost two years later, Sheacare has been registered as a Ugandan product and is on supermarket shelves and in boutiques.
From her kitchen to her backyard, Ms Busingye has managed to move into a location where she can produce more and high quality products.
She has grown her product range to 15 items from just Shea butter to creams, shea oil for hair, lip balm, body lotion and soap. Her production ranges between 40 to 80 kilogrammes per week.
Not bad for an enterprise that employs one full time person in production, two to look into distribution points and others to temporarily manage exhibitions.
Besides, she says, getting her first products on the shelves has been her greatest achievement because it was difficult.
Speaking money
Ms Busingye says her net worth is about Shs20m and at this particular point, she ploughs back most of it into the business as she expands, relocates and markets the products.
Prospects
She is optimistic that in five years, Sheacare will hit 10 countries, have a factory for a range of 40 products and invest in extraction in two years from now.
“The industry is changing dramatically now, whether or not I have different outlets around the world is not a key thing for me but having the brand known, that is key,” she concludes.

Tips for success
Understand what you want to do. If you have an idea, you must get technical advice if it is not your area of expertise otherwise you will spend a lot of money doing ‘try and error’.
Put in mind that it is not going to be easy so you have to overcome try and error in the production stage, marketing and be able to persevere.
Put the money back into the business as much as possible.

How Busingye works through her challenges

Marketing
Ms Busingye says she chose a number of angles to get into the market, one being using social media aggressively, farmers’ markets, Saturday morning markets and many exhibitions.
She plans to do line marketing (television and radio) once she can meet the production that comes with the resultant demand.

Challenges
As Sheacare continues to grow, passion has played a great role in Ms Busingye’s business. But she finds herself pondering on how to get to the next step.
“This is how you look at financing, for example, how do I go from cottage industry to small scale or medium size? There is not a lot of financing around that especially if you have not been in the industry for a while,” she explains.
The other challenge is getting Ugandans to believe in Ugandan products and why the products are expensive. More so, there are misconceptions in the market that Shea makes people darker than what they are.
Nevertheless, Ms Busingye hopes that continuous sensitisation and drive by the government to protect and promote the Shea nut tree under attack will salvage the situation.