the journey of life can be unpredictable
It's been a long time since I last published an article on my blog, my last published article was in June 2018 and trust me when I say a lot of things have happened since then Boy! Life as we all know it is a never ending journey, it's our responsibility to keep open heart and eyes to recognize opportunities whenever it presents itself and to also know when to wrap it all up and move on to the next big thing!
I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2012 as a 19 yr old boy with my then startup; Wefix (a facility and property management company in Delta State, Nigeria) which eventually pivoted in 2016 to become iFixng.com (an online platform for hiring handy men and artisans) upon moving to Lagos.
iFix did tremendously well, creating job and learning opportunities for handymen and artisans in Nigeria as well as making hiring artisans easy for users with well over 500 successful transactions (excluding some crazy transactions in-between infused with madness, lol) in 2 years, we managed to "survive" (cause business in Nigeria is crazy as hell) on our own with no external support or funds whatsoever and little margins coming in from transactions. After 2 years of craziness, we had hit rock bottom, this time we either had to raise some substantial amount of money to infuse traction, scale et al or wrap it all up and move to something else.
Oh well, as you guessed right, we chose to move to the next big thing! something that could survive on "its own" but this time it had to be something still within our passion but also what Nigerians had been craving for a long time and with a very high demand.
Voila! we finally figured it out, this was the year 2018 and with over 11 million vehicles on the road in Nigeria, coupled with the tireless never ending commute especially in a busy urban city like Lagos, we finally decided to pivot once again to the vehicle care industry; ladies and gentlemen (and all other genders in-between) that's how Parkit (Parkit.ng) was born.
As I'm well aware, we all at some point in time have been dealt with by our very professional mechanics and vehicle technicians, this has been a very major problem that wasn't looking to go away anytime soon, we knew it would be a very long journey to disrupt this entire industry and so we decided to take it in phases.
We rolled out our pilot service in Parkit; which was a car wash and detailing service like never before, and as predicted from our tireless nights of research and projections we got an overwhelming response from our very first day of operation, it was finally happening, we had done it! changed car wash and detailing service forever, giving people some hope and what to look forward to in the auto care industry, it was a wonderful sight to behold.
Now barely two years in and with over 9000 vehicles that have been attended to in 3+ physical locations in strategic locations across Lagos, we believe we made the right decision to pivot. Tremendous success is being recorded and we're very grateful we made that decision and at the right
time.
This entire journey and chapter of my life has taught me to always trust the process and most importantly keep open eye for opportunities and to also know when is the right time to wrap it all up and move on.
Hope you had a good read, looking forward to writing more in days to come, chao!
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