00:06Can Kenyan design take on cheap imports and AI? Inside Sherry's bold furniture revolution.
00:14Kenyan's furniture industry is booming but faces cheap imports and AI-generated designs. Can local
00:23craftsmanship fight back? You know the feeling. Sending out your 47th CV and hearing
00:30nothing. Sherry Kihato lived that nightmare in 2018. Broke, desperate and honestly running out
00:41of hope. That night she wrote one sentence that changed everything. I was just doing my
00:48journaling and then the idea came or the thought came you're gonna start a
00:53furniture brand it's gonna be called Savannah Space and it's gonna be made in
00:57Kenya. Honestly my family was extremely supportive so I may have not gotten
01:03monetary help but I had a home, somewhere to sleep, food to eat. There was no worry
01:11about if I use these savings I'm not gonna eat the next day. It was like you want to
01:16do this if you take it seriously then go ahead. She had $200 and a dream. No
01:22carpentry skills, no safety net. Would you risk it all for an idea? The initial
01:29business model was it was going to be a platform where carpenters and people in
01:34the arts can sell their things. So I went walking all along Gong Road telling these
01:40fundis I'm starting this thing this website please join me you know and get
01:44you sales. All of them said no except one. It was scary because again I didn't even
01:51know the different types of wood I knew nothing about carpentry but I had that
01:55vision in my head and genuinely nothing was gonna stop me. So the thing that
02:02changed our business model was actually trying to do it. I learned about more
02:07fundis, more carpenters, more people in the furniture sector and I approached them
02:12and I said I'm building this platform. And I quickly noticed that they don't have
02:16time to go on their computers, take pictures, speak to clients, organize
02:20deliveries, all of that. They don't have time and also make furniture. So I quickly
02:25learned that that model can't work and that's when I pivoted and I said you know
02:29what instead of that let me have my own retail space, produce my own furniture.
02:36We look at the quality of our products, for example the joinery. We make sure each department
02:44is keen from initial stage to finishing. And it's only after we are all satisfied that we approve it to
02:56be delivered to the client.
03:00In Kenya, most furniture workshops are run by men.
03:06Cherie walked in and changed the rules. No overnight success here, just posts after post,
03:14order after order, from two artisans to 41. And now the challenge isn't finding clients, it's keeping up.
03:24When I changed the business model from a platform to actually making and selling furniture, I spoke with someone who
03:31he's sort of like a mentor, kind of. And he asked me, where do you want to position yourself in
03:38the market
03:38in terms of who do you want to compete with? And I didn't really know, so I just said I
03:42don't know.
03:42And his advice was, you are never going to be able to compete with Asia on pricing.
03:47You will never produce as cheap as Asia, particularly China.
03:51So that shouldn't be the way you compete. You should never compete on pricing.
03:55Find another way that sets you apart. And it was at that moment where I thought,
03:58OK, if I can't compete with price, I can compete with quality. I can compete with unique designs.
04:03I can compete with heritage storytelling. So that's what sets us apart from, I'd say, importers or mass producers.
04:13It's the fact that our focus is on extremely high quality and extremely unique pieces as well.
04:20We're living in the age of conscious consumerism. Yes, as much as AI and technology and 3D printing are growing,
04:26consumers' mindsets are also changing in the fact that they want to know where their pieces are coming from,
04:31who's made their pieces. Is it sustainable resource? Is it ethically made?
04:35More and more people, especially young people, want to know this about the products.
04:38Some days she probably questioned everything, but piece by piece, literally,
04:44her design studio became impossible to ignore.
04:47This one's called a braided bar because the patterns look like, you know when your hair is braided,
04:53they look like a braiding pattern. So when you open it, it's a home bar.
05:00And it's really cool because on the outside, it's like this art decorative piece, but then it's like functional art.
05:07One of the visions I have is to put Kenya at the forefront of global design.
05:11People are starting to appreciate our story, appreciate our furniture, appreciate where we've come from.
05:16And I want to be part of that tapestry of putting Kenya at the forefront of design, where when people
05:22hear Kenya,
05:24they also understand that there's amazing designers, amazing artistry that's coming out of this country.
05:29You should care less about what people think or say about you.
05:33I always think of Sherry at 80, when most of my life is behind me.
05:38Will I really want to look back and think, oh, I shouldn't have done that because so and so was
05:44speaking about me
05:45or so and so was saying something about me.
05:46You should actually make it your job to even make people talk more.
05:52From $200 and a scribbled idea to a design empire rewriting Kenya's story, the next global brand might start where
06:00you are, if you dare.
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