Many thought that Nigeria’s wedding industry is a multimillion naira industry. Apparently, it is worth much more. In this exclusive interview, Oyetayo Oyewolu, the co-founder and CEO of Palmfront tells us how much Nigeria’s wedding industry is worth and much more. Excerpts.
Can we meet you?
My name is Oyetayo Oyewolu, a techpreneur based in Nigeria. I am the Co-founder and CEO of Palmfront.com, Nigeria’s 1st online wedding catalogue. Palmfront all started with an idea that was birthed precisely in August 2014 and was officially launched to the public in August 2015 after a lot of market surveys and beta testing of the platform.
Can you tell us about Palmfront?
Leveraging on the use of social media networking, e-commerce and the internet, Palmfront is focused on giving couples a medium to reach out to their friends and family with details about their wedding. We have re-innovated the concept behind building wedding website to a more simple and effective way. Couples can now create and deploy their wedding website in less than 30mins. Alongside this, we’ve also been able to introduce a gift registry system. Couples now have the option of choosing from over 30,000 gorgeous gift items to make up their gift registry, this solves the problem of duplicated gift giving and inefficient gift giving that occur in our society.
In other words, Palmfront serves as an online wedding catalogue that enables couples to do all of the following: send e-Invitation, create a wedding website, create a gift registry, a shop which is exclusive to only wedding products, reach out to a variety of accredited wedding vendors and get wedding styles, tips, inspiration & ideas.
What motivated you to setup Palmfront?
Palmfront was inspired by the drive to spice up and modernize the wedding society in Nigeria.
How were you able to source for funds to run your business?
Well at the moment Palmfront has not sourced for any external funding, we have been bootstrapping.
Many people have described Nigeria’s wedding industry as a multi-million naira business. As an insider and stakeholder, is this really true?
Personally, I feel the Nigeria wedding industry is not a multi-million naira industry but a Multi-Million Dollar Industry. The wedding industry in Nigeria has grown so big. Let’s take Lagos state as a case study which is just one major city in Nigeria, the budget spent on an average wedding in Lagos is 3.5 million naira. With way-over 50 weddings taking place per month. I believe when you do the maths you would agree with me that we are dealing with a Multi-Million Dollar Industry.
How much do you think an average Nigerian should budget for his/her wedding?
Well, this boils down to a lot of factors. Nigeria is a country that has people with different cultural backgrounds, lifestyles and locations. However, as stated earlier to do an averagely good wedding in a major city in Nigeria, a couple should budget nothing less than 3.5 million naira. This is to say the wedding is not a society wedding nor is it a wedding in the highbrow areas of a major city.
How will you describe the business so far? And how has the reception being like?
It’s been really challenging, for the fact that we are introducing a whole new idea to the wedding society in Nigeria. We have ensured that we are always on top of our game. As a result, we have gotten great reception most especially from Nigerians that are used to western civilization. Some of the solutions Palmfront is offering are not new to them. But one major thing that has aided the acceptability is that Palmfront is structured and pattern to our Nigeria society, making it easy for clients to relate with.
What are the challenges you encountered in setting up your business?
The major challenge we had was the ability to merge different wedding solutions all in one place and make it easy for our users to understand. Palmfront is a collection of 6 different solutions that can stand on their own individually but we wanted to have a one-stop destination to all these problems. Yes, it was a bit of a challenge with different restructuring taking place after our first launch back in August 2015 but today we can say we have been able to overcome the challenge.
A word for intending young Nigerian entrepreneurs?
Well to young Nigerian Entrepreneurs, I would say never wait for the perfect product before you get started because it may look perfect to you but your clients/audience may see it differently. So get started, you can always restructure and build inline with clients needs and specifications.
