On this episode of Strip, Morenike Molehin takes us through her business journey. She is the Founder and Creative Director of Oak and Teak – arguably the fastest growing full service interior design and furniture making company in Africa. Over a period of four short years, Morenike has succeeded in positioning Oak and Teak as a leading interior design company with expertise in servicing residential and corporate clients. Her entry strategy into the interior design business was through the provision of interior design services to clients who desired to furnish and set up baby nurseries. In this relatively uncontested sub-segment of the market, she carved a niche for her company and built a stellar reputation for exceeding customer expectations by going above the line of duty. Consequently, with several satisfied customers in the bag, Morenike gradually diversified the Oak and Teak service offerings, first by incorporating services for residential spaces and subsequently services for commercial spaces. Through her focused leadership and low cost business strategies, Morenike has strategically and profitably grown the Oak and Teak brand to become an exemplary startup company in Nigeria. While the company is based in Lagos, it has served clients across multiple states in Nigeria as well as international projects in Dubia. Her corporate clients cut across industries such as financial service, hospitality, non-profits, schools, and recently a five-star hotel. A competitive advantage which she tactfully created for her company is its ability to deliver cutting edge designs that satisfy the aesthetic and functionality requirements of clients at competitive prices. This has made Oak and Teak a household name in the interior design industry in Nigeria.
Her educational background involved two degrees in Mathematics – a first degree in Industrial Mathematics from Covenant University and a second degree in Financial Mathematics and Computation from the University of Leicester, United Kingdom. After her second degree, Morenike returned to Nigeria and secured a job at a management consulting firm in Lagos, where she worked for approximately one year. Following her exist from the firm, she spent approximately one year in rigorous personal online study about interior design. The more she studied, the more interest she developed for the business of interior design. It was the knowledge acquired from personal study that formed the foundation upon which Oak and Teak was built. After acquiring the requisite knowledge, she became her company’s very first client by she deciding to decorate her daughter’s nursery spending about $2,000 from personal savings. She took professional pictures and uploaded on a popular wedding blog in Nigeria for visibility. That decision turned out to provide the needed publicity for the business generating several clients for multiple years.