After his one year compulsory service to fatherland, Mr Olusina Ogunrinde worked in the banking industry for some years before voluntarily retiring in February 1998 to start his own business. “So many factors made me leave paid employment, one of which was the urge to be on my own in good time.

I started Trustmark Communications properly on May 1, 1998 in a room and parlour apartment at Onipanu Lagos. Before this time, while still in the banking industry, I was already doing advertising; my friends were helping me.

I am very creative so I did a lot of creative things which were approved. I believe that if God is with you, things will fall into place. That was what prompted me to leave the bank. I felt that since I could make some money from advertising, instead of tying myself down to salary, I could make more money on my own.

What we do:

We were into advertising mainly but in 2005, we had made some money so we decided to diversify into what we are doing today which include screen printing, computerized monogramming & embroidery, heat transfer prints, award plaque production, corporate gifts, corporate lapel pin production, branding of T-shirts, towels etc., and occasionally, we do paper printing.

Diversifying:

“As a matter of fact, diversifying has been our saving grace because if we did not diversify as at the time we lost the Chevron account, it would have been disastrous. In 2001, we moved to a three-bedroom flat in Ikeja. Of course, there have been ups and downs,” he said. In their bid to expand the business, Ogunrinde said they added eight more machines in 2006 with the help of a loan from the defunct Intercontinental Bank.

Saving grace:

Unfortunately, life is not always a bed of roses so in 2010, “things went a bit down, we were faced with rental and other problems and that was when we were rescued by the Technology Incubation Centre (TIC), Lagos under the National Board for Technology Incubation of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. That was what brought us here.

“Somebody directed me to this place saying it is a small scale industry condominium where my business could be saved because at that point, the business was actually going into extinction and we were about losing the Chevron account so things were a bit difficult although we got it back and in the process, we were able to pay all our indebtedness to Intercontinental Bank. We lost it eventually in 2013 and we have been at this centre since then,” he said.

“TIC has been our saving grace because when we moved in here, there was nothing like payment of rent, we only pay for electricity, water etc. This place has tenure and we are hoping that very soon, we will move. We render services so we cannot do that in the bush, otherwise we would have bought a piece of land somewhere and put up a structure. Also the economy has not been good. TIC is still accommodating us, but we hope that soon, we will get our own place because I wouldn’t want to go out now and start paying rent again, that will be suicidal.”

Challenges:

“Power has been a huge challenge. A situation where the country is generating only 2,000 plus megawatts of electricity for about 170 million people, that is a precarious situation. The little money we make is spent on fuel. In the last two weeks, we have been battling with fuel scarcity and you can imagine what we are going through. We had to buy fuel at N250 per litre. So how can a business survive in this kind of environment? But by and large, I thank God for where we are and we believe that God will take us to where we want to be.”

Number of employees:

From day one, I employed two persons – a graphic artist and a receptionist. Now, I have nine plus myself, making 10. The beauty of small scale industry is that it employs many people but if I am into buying and selling, I may not need more than one staff but because I am producing, I have nine.

Imagine if I have more machines, I can have 15 employees. We have not been able to get financial assistance from government; we hear N200 billion for small scale industries but apart from those who got the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFund) loan here many years back, since I moved in about four, five years ago, I have not had the opportunity of getting a loan to help my business so we are more or less stagnant.”

Investors:

“If we see individuals who want to invest, we will accommodate them on our own terms because my fear with people investing in your business is that if things improve dramatically, they will want to kill you or drive you away from the business and that is why I am always afraid. Institutional investors are safer.”

Start-up capital:

“We started with two machines which I brought in from the US. They cost thousands of dollars; I can’t remember the exact amount. I know that when we added more machines in 2006, it cost us about N15 million, that was the loan we got from Intercontinental. We had some counterpart funding though because we were still doing advertising and money was coming in.”

Patronage:

We thank God because no matter how bad the situation is, we have not stopped production. It may not be really the way we want it because when you are doing business, you want big money coming in. But in our case, big jobs come occasionally, the rest are small jobs and it is not helping cash flow.

Although I thank God for this and this environment, but the type of business I want to do is the business that will bring me bulk money to do something tangible, money I will be able to invest, even if it is once in a while. “All the same, I am grateful to God for what I am doing now, may be this is where He wants me to be at the moment. In a nutshell, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Like some would say, it could be far, far, far better.”