Fully furnished

By Tormod Nuland
for Capital

Imagine a home filled with beautiful handmade furniture, breathtaking pictures on the walls, and cool handicraft on all the shelves and tables. Imagine that you can go there, and be able to buy the things you like. Well, you can in Addis Ababa, if you go to "Decor Colonial Furniture".

This business in not only about money, but very much about satisfaction, says Ato Habtamu Semu, general manager of the furniture shop next to Brass Hospital on the way to Bole Medhanialem. It would actually not be right to call it just another furniture shop, for the company also imports all the products they are selling. Secondly, the furniture is unique, each shipment imported contains different furniture, the selection of goods is seldom imported repeatedly. And thirdly, the shop is organized like a real home, with furniture belonging to the living room displayed in the living room, the bedrooms containing things for the bedroom, and so on and so forth.
When we first rented this house, we were thinking of displaying the goods like it is done in other places, in rows and showcases. Since it is rented, we cannot remodel it in any way. But then we looked at the floors, the ceiling, and discovered that we could use the set-up of an ordinary home since our colonial/antique style furniture would match it perfectly, Ato Habtamu explains.
The business started five years ago, a company setting up with imports from Indonesia, where their trade partner is a company called ALMI, partially Ethiopian, because Ato Habtamu’s sister Mimi Freyhiwot Semu is running it together with her French husband, in the city of Yogokarta. They buy the furniture from local producers. The art of woodcarving and woodcraft is strong and widespread in Indonesia, and it is merely a question of finding the best makers. The finishing is being done in two factories belonging to the company. W/ro Mimi has been living in Indonesia for over 10 years, and has been supplying shops in Paris with her funiture. She also used to run a shop in Seattle, USA.
These pieces of furniture are all hand-made, out of materials like teak, mahogany, bamboo and banana leaf, all natural products. And they react as natural products as well. Indonesia is a hot and humid country, so the wood will contain a small percentage of moisture or water. When it arrives here in Addis Ababa, a dry city at high altitude, there might very well appear small cracks in the solid-wood furniture. But that only shows that they are real products. We inform customers about this, and we usually say that if there are no cracks, well that is when they should complain! These are pieces that need to be seen, it is very difficult to describe it by just telling and explaining. What often happens is that some people see furniture bought in our place in friends’ homes, and so they come to us. That sort of display is the best advertising we can get, says Ato Habtamu.
And he is right about the explaining bit. The chairs on display look like, well, chairs, but you can see and feel that this is solid, literally. One chair is shaped like a hand, you sit on the palm and the fingers serve as the back. There is everything from small stools, coffee tables, to entire salons. There are paintings on the walls made by Indonesian artists. There is an abundance of wooden statues of animals, elephants and giraffes, for some reason the creative Indonesian craftsmen base their work on African animals! To add another bit to the feeling of the home, you can go into the garden, which is actually a flower and gardening shop. It is not part of the Decor Colonial Furniture company, but co-exists with the same group of customers.
I was wondering what to do with the space we did not use for the shop. I realized that the business that would be put up there would have to be compatible with our customers, both shops had to be able to serve them. One man offered to pay me good money for renting the place for a fast-food shop, but I couldn't do that. so when I heard of a lady looking for a place to set up a sort of "garden nursery", I thought that would be a great shop to have in the same compound, both selling natural products, says the young manager who was only in his early twenties when he started.
There are nine people all together working in the shop. We are like a family, we have no rigid formats controlling our activities, we eat together and socialize. Everybody feels that they have a share of the business, and I keep saying to them that "If the business grows, you grow. "
The employees have developed skills in advising people on which furniture to put in which rooms. We do not follow a textbook in interior decorating, what we do is that we go with the vibes of the room. I know about people who have about 75 per cent of their houses furnished with the products we sell. We keep in touch with our customers, so you might also add that they are also almost like a family. We do a sort of "follow-up" on them, we offer polishing of their furniture with a special oil from Indonesia.
You can see some of the furniture from the shop at Carnivore restaurant, especially the bar has been furnished with the products of the company. When asked about future plans for the company, Ato Habtamu says that in the long run, their primary goal is to establish more branches. They do not have any real competitors of their kind and style in Addis Ababa. The market is not big in the first place, and they are also the only ones selling furniture from Indonesia with the colonial finishing style.
But we are in a vulnerable business, sales of so called "luxury-goods" are very much subject to booms and slumps in the economy, Ato Habtamu adds.
His favorite kind of customer are the passionate ones, the ones who come and look at a piece of furniture with a glow in their eye several times, and finally buy it after having saved money to do so because they just have to have it. But then no wonder that those are Ato Habtamus favorite ones, because he is quite passionate himself. I love dealing with customers. That gives me so much satisfaction, which is what this business is all about for me, and not only about money, Ato Habtamu concludes.