BY VICTOR ADAR
At 34, Ms Penny Njire, the Event Hub co-founder has a bright future. She got a loan of Sh1 million from her mum years back to set up a successful company and has vivid memories of how she started up small, taking one project at a time seven years ago. Her dream to run a high growth enterprise did not die because of luck of access to capital from financial institutions.
“I didn’t have anything that I could put forward as security, that’s why I didn’t approach the banks,” she says, adding that a loan from her mum came in handy because of the timeliness.
Citing business boom in the events sector, her firm is using technology to address key needs thanks to the launch of e-manager software. You have to imagine what it is like to register manually at events. Participants get tired, and organizations spend too much time and resources in doing the registrations.
Njire has a lot of faith in the software saying it has been used in several events organised by giants such as IBM and Google. It is filling the gaps big time offering attendees the convenience to register online, eases collection of registration fees for meetings, concerts, events and conferences, automates the entire registration process and makes the management of participants’ registration activities easier. The e-manager has more features such as real time data entry and eBadge printing, as well as on the spot eCertificate generation and printing. “We were a very small company. But what has really made us grow at the moment is the eManager,” she points out.
“We make registration so much fun. We make it easy to set up, manage, and process registrations for conferences and events of any magnitude. It also has a security angle to it. It tells so and so has entered the room, for example, breakaway sessions… so you will know the number of people in a certain room, and why some rooms are full and others not as participants give real time feedback.”
There’s a lot more to event management; catering, transport, accommodation. Under technical stuff, there are stages, lighting, and generators, basically everything under the technical aspect of events. In décor, there are the tents, tables and chairs, and the fabric work. General event management takes care of the logistics aspect of the event, coordination of catering, the venue, and basically bringing together all the resources needed for an event taking centre stage.
“It is very easy to coordinate because during an event when you have a stage you definitely need a carpet. So where does a carpet come from? That’s under décor. So the décor angle provides the carpet. They are really intertwined… they are products which complement each other,” says Njire.
From her vantage as a director who meets up with clients to pitch, strategise, and close deals, she agrees, doing this business requires special phenomenal. The reality is that it has been a tough journey with a lot of low moments a long the way and the far the company has come is as a result of hard work. More to the point, Event Hub is not what it used to be. It all started in 2009 as Black Brand. As it was back then, people really didn’t know what they were doing. “It wasn’t really out there in the name,” Njire recalled.
“So we thought why don’t we come up with a name that really is inline with what we do? A hub is something that provides a lot of things together. And then what are we doing basically at events? So we combined that into Event Hub. Now under Event Hub the company, are four main products, which are registration, technical production, décor, and the general event management perspective.”
Last May is when it rebranded to Event Hub – something that provides a lot more – and with 8 permanent employees as well as 40 casuals who are usually engaged depending on workload, the firm is now on the precipice of growth. Because of equipment and all, Ms Njire says, the company is currently valued at Sh30 million.
At start-up stage they were not able to execute a common plan especially taking up corporate jobs, they typically lacked equipment, and of course, strong financial muscle. What used to happen, from 2009, Event Hub has been a supplier to agencies. “We never used to get direct businesses from corporates. At that time even the capacity we had was not that big to handle a corporate event. We would go to agencies to give us supply of, say décor’, next time we would supply technical, something like that but not doing the whole 360 angle to it,” says Njire.
Although events industry is great, it has not been a walk in the park. It may be hard to understand but she says the biggest challenge specific to the events industry is timelines.
“Sometimes you find you have a big event coming up but you get approvals very late.
Sorting out everything last minute is not easy. Also the kind of competition in the industry is unfair because there are so many players. Sometimes you pitch for same event, but someone would come and say to a client, since I have bigger dome than them you come on board I will offer you bigger dome.”
Impossible to compare men to women in this industry, addressing stereotypes and other social challenges comes in handy. While most firms are taking on the “gender balance” approach, for Event Hub, in order to achieve among other things, big clientele, leveraging on strengths rather than weaknesses is the most important thing. And Ms Njire is feeling really good about her knack.
“In terms of the creative angle to the event I think I have an advantage. Once I get a brief from the client I can advice better especially on décor and if it comes to registration and the kind of hostesses who are there. That kind of thing, I have a keener eye,” she says.
