Nalubega making imperfect art perfect

Aisha Nalubega was living a comfortable life. She was making ends meet at Imperial Group of Hotels and Fairway Hotel and Spa where she worked for six years as a receptionist, cashier and reservationist. But then Covid-19 came. She lost her job at the hotel as she was one of the people laid off due to the pandemic as companies were struggling to stay afloat with a limited number of employees.

Looking for plan B

After spending months jobless, Nalubega decided to become self-employed and what better way than to involve in something she loves – art!

“I love art and design but I can’t draw. So I figured there are so many ways of applying art in real life other than painting. I love an atmosphere where decor and art speaks for itself,” she says.

Adding that so many people out there have money and beautiful homes but lack an element of art and design so, she ventured into this business to add beauty to people’s living spaces.

“A friend called Faith recognised my love for decor and advised me to do bottle Art and my second friend Racheal, asked why I didn’t think about making concrete trays and those small decor pieces, that’s where I developed the idea of making vases. We sat down and decided to do concrete art together since we have the same drive about interior and exterior décor,” Nalubega recounts.

To kickstart her business, she bought art paint and sprays which she used to colour bottles. She also bought cement and sand plus other building items that help in molding concrete art. Before she knew it, friends and neighbours came through to buy.

The Imperfect Art

A name is important for every business and for Nalubega, ‘Imperfect Art’ was the perfect name for her business. She says because nothing is perfect, Imperfect is suitable for what she does.

“And besides the cynicism, every mistake in art is a design, hence the name.” she adds.

The business is majorly about home décor and it comprises bottle art, handcrafted lampshades, candle stands, ashtrays, flower vases, leaf trays, coin/key trays, planters, and basically any art made out of concrete and bottles.

Besides that, Imperfect Art also has plants, mostly herbal tea spices such as mints, basil, lemon balm, lemon grass among others, plus other plants or flowers that make a home look beautiful inside out.

Making imperfect art perfect

After collecting the materials she uses, Nalubega says that for the bottle art, an idea develops overnight and she plays around with the colours and designs while for the concrete art, she mixes sand with cement and water, makes paste and starts molding a leaf tray or bowl or anything that is there to do. She however, advises that all this must be done with gloves on and a face mask for precaution.

“Always wear gloves and a mask because cement burns and it’s bad for the lungs.”

Materials

She does most of her shopping from hardware shops and art paint shops around her home. A bag of cement is sold at Shs28,000, a kilo of white cement goes for Shs3,000, a wheelbarrow of sand goes for Shs5,000. Sprays go for Shs15,000, paint for bottle art goes for Shs20,000 upwards while painting brushes cost between Shs2,000 and shs15,000.

Costs

Like every business, profits are expected and for Imperfect Art, they have not been coming in as expected due to Covid. Asked how much she makes, Nalubega says that she has been making a profit of about Shs500,000 in a month but believes that she would make much more.

Marketing

For Nalubega’s business, she relies mostly on close friends, family members and her neighbours with focus on customer satisfaction.

“My biggest clients are my close friends who also refer their friends to me. Truth be told, there is nothing much I am using as a strategy to success apart from online marketing and making good quality work,” Nalubega emphasises.

Because she makes unique pieces, she has maintained most of her clients.

“I recall one client telling me “I’m so happy about my piece because I haven’t seen your work anywhere else in all those decor shops,” Nalubega recounts. Besides earning from this business, Nalubega says it widens her perspective.

“You learn something new almost every day. The business drives you to do something new or create something new every now and then. You cannot keep doing the same thing like someone working in an office, no, you keep doing something different that earns you a different sum.”

Challenges

Like every other business, the market is one of her biggest challenges mainly because she works from home. There is also a problem of delivery which is caused by dealing with delicate items and transport costs.

“Delivery from Entebbe where I work from to client’s destination is a problem because you find that transporting flower vases or heavy planters require a car and with fuel prices, clients end up fighting about the cost of delivery while others just naturally don’t want to pay for delivery,” she says.

Getting it right

 Having done this business for over a year now, Nalubega, a graduate of Business administration and human resource management at Ndejje University, advises that getting a strategic location would be ideal to make art pieces because there is a huge market for art.

She also advises people interested in art to venture into it for passion.

 “There are days I wake up not wanting to smell cement or paint but because I love what I’m doing, I drive myself to my art store willingly.”

After President Museveni announcing that the economy will be fully functional this year, Nalubega hopes to acquire a showroom and create market for her products outside Uganda while expanding her spices garden to about three to five acres to tap into the export market.