UNLIKE other climes where businesses have survived many generations and are still waxing stronger to the enviable status of legacy companies, in Africa, nay Nigeria, most businesses have had the misfortune of dying with their founders for reasons which border on the superficial to the complex.
Making of successful legacy companies Some existing businesses with long years of history dating back over a century and counting include the following: Ford Motors, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Walmart, MacDonald’s, Johnnie Walker, Coca Cola, General Electric, Sony, Panasonic, Julius Bergers, General Motors to mention just a few.
The common thread which runs through most of these companies is their “survivability”, which according to Mr. Sola Oladipupo, a brand specialist, is the ability to sustain brand equity.
Expatiating, Oladipupo said: “Compared to most of our indigenous businesses, a lot of companies that have survived centuries and are still in existence have been able to achieve that longevity simply by adopting winning techniques which has stood them in good stead. Winning techniques, if you may, is not cast in stones. The world is dynamic, and so it also requires any business set for the top to be able to think out of the box.”
“There are also bad stories out there. For instance, IBM type writers, Polaroid cameras to mention just a few are no longer in vogue. The promoters of these businesses probably didn’t take the initiative when their contemporaries did and hence were driven out of business”, he stressed.
Echoing similar sentiments, Mr. Ifeanyi Nwade, General Manager, Finance, Nigeria Import Export Bank (NEXIM), at a public forum in Lagos recently, observed that any businessman worth his salt must adopt what he described as “the IMF, the three nuggets of business success, which are ideas, management and finance.”
In the view of Funso Olaolu, an ICT expert, studies have shown that most businesses that have stood the test of time was because their founders had sound vision, ideas, clear succession plan, and governance structure to drive same.
Longevity
As far as longevity is concerned, Johnnie Walker has had to weather more than 200 years of existence on the global market and 92 years on the Nigerian scene. Giving some insight on the company’s history, Thomas Jones, Global Brand Ambassador of Johnnie Walker says, “Nearly 200 years ago, a farm hand named John Walker began a journey – selling blended whisky from a small grocery store in Kilmarnock, Scotland. John Walker was born at Toddriggs Farm, Ayrshire, Scotland in 1805.
“After the death of his father, he opened his grocery shop in Kilmarnock, Scotland in 1820 selling malt Scotch whisky, before long he started blending his own whisky; hence the Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky was born.
Jones attributed the success of the Johnnie Walker brand to the consistency of “flavours, commitment to our connoisseurs and building a brand that is recognized by all for its enduring qualities.”
Local examples
Adeola Timothy Odutola, who, according to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, is the foremost Nigerian and perhaps, African industrialist in history, had businesses that were household names in the country. His fleet of companies included: Odutola Nigerian Industries Limited – manufacturers of bicycle tyres and tubes in Ijebu-Ode, Odutola Tyre soles Company Limited with factories in Ibadan, Kano and Onitsha – re-threading automotive tyres, Odutola Tyre & Rubber Company Limited etc.
Investigation by The Nation however revealed that some of the businesses like the Odutola Tyre is no longer in existence as the premises which used to house the company, at the old Lagos Road, Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, has been converted to a residential building.
Like Odutola, the late Hamzat Adebowale founded Adebowale Stores as a retail outlet in Lagos. Taking advantage of the Federal Government’s favourable industrial policies later on, Adebowale incorporated Adebowale Electrical Industries Limited as a manufacturing concern. The move marked a turning point in his career from a businessman to a manufacturer, especially in 1975, when the young company rolled out its first set of locally manufactured electrical/electronics products, opening branches in Ibadan, Kano and Lagos.
Investigation by The Nation also revealed that following the death of Adebowale few years ago, his estate, which comprises his vast business empire is no longer what it used to be.
An insider who used to work with the patriarch of the Adebowale family confided in The Nation that the lack of proper succession plan has been the bane of the once thriving business empire of the late business mogul.
Akintola Williams at the vibrant age of thirty-three years founded his firm in 1952. The company which grew organically and through mergers to become the largest professional services firm in Nigeria by 2004 was the first indigenous chartered accounting firm in Africa.
Before his retirement in 1983, Williams gained business from indigenous companies including Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot, K.O. Mbadiwe’s African Insurance Company, Fawehinmi Furniture and Ojukwu Transport.
By March 1992 the company had 19 partners and 535 staff. Between April 1999 and May 2004, Akintola Williams & Co merged with two other accounting firms to create Akintola Williams Deloitte, the largest professional services firm in Nigeria with a staff of over 600.
Being at the helm of affairs of any organisation can be a herculean task, more so when the leader is swamped with the responsibility of resuscitating a thirty-eight year old company on the verge of collapse. This is the fate of the Managing Director, Xerox H.S (Nigeria) Limited, Mr. Femi Okunade, who was saddled with the job of turning around the fortunes of Xerox Nigeria from almost a moribund and debt-ridden company to a successful business enterprise.
Okunade who addressed a crowd in Lagos recently recalled that in his determination to restore the fortunes of Xerox Nigeria, his team set out a five-year turnaround plan for the company.
“We set clear cut precise objectives aimed at first understanding what our business model is. We also set out to create a new culture of hard work, results, reward system and recognition as well as hard and ethical work culture from leadership downward”, he recounted.
At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, he said: “Transforming a business requires not only a brilliant innovative strategy, but also faith, focus, fortitude and more. These are the internal realities of transformation. Transformation requires relentless and aggressive leadership.”
With rapid local and global expansion as the core interest of dynamic companies with a long term vision, Peju Adebayo, CEO, Mouka Limited speaks on the transformation and growth of Mouka Foam, a family-owned company founded over five decades ago.
“In 2007 Actis which is a private equity company headquartered in the UK and with investments all over the world invested in Mouka and took the majority stake in Mouka. I came on board in 2007 after the Actis investment. In 2009 we have two plants in Lagos and Benin”, Mrs. Adebayo recalled in an interview recently.
Continuing, she said: “In 2009 we were already expanding and we opened the third plant in the north when we noticed we were actually absent from the north. Right now our priority and expansion in the northern part of Nigeria is still very fresh.”
Sharing his company’s experience, Segun Ajasa, Head of Corporate Communications at Onward Paper Mill’s recalled that Onward which was incorporated in 1972 was involved in printing mainly exercise books but later diversified into customised envelopes.
The company, Ajasa stressed,has since gone into printing calendars and diaries. “In the last five years, we invested over N3 billion through private placements and other equity funds from investors into the business and in doing this they bought into the hi-tech printing machineries and also did a lot of restructuring within the organisation so that we could move from mainly manufacturing to a service-based company.”
The few success stories notwitstanding, economic analysts, however, believe that a lot of factors determine the success or otherwise of businesses.
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Whither Nigerian legacy companies?