While Nigeria has witnessed growth in modern shopping malls and air-conditioned supermarkets, an estimated 90% of shopping still takes place through informal retail channels – a sprawling network of table-top vendors, street stalls, open-air markets, and hawkers weaving through traffic. For consumer goods companies aiming to reach the country’s more than 230 million people, securing a foothold in this informal sector is critical. Yet navigating this fragmented ecosystem can be a complex challenge.
In 2010, Gbola Lawson, then the fiancé and now husband of Fastizers founder Debby Lawson, set out to help introduce the company’s cookies into this informal market. His strategy was simple: minimise the risk for vendors.
One Saturday, armed with packs of cookies – at the time sold mainly in offices and a handful of neighbourhood stores – Gbola headed to the streets. At a busy Lagos bus terminal, he approached a merchant and offered six packs to sell, without charging upfront. If the cookies did not sell by Monday, Gbola promised to buy them back himself. The vendor, seeing no downside, agreed. Gbola replicated the offer with two other street sellers.
By Monday, Debby, eager to see the results, called the first vendor. All six packs had sold out the same day, he told her, and he had wanted to reorder but lacked her contact details. The other two vendors reported similar results. “I was excited; I was jumping,” Debby recalls.
Buoyed by this early success, Fastizers began supplying more stock to the sellers. Within a short time, the company was delivering three dozen packets to each vendor daily. They expanded their efforts, targeting informal retailers at prominent bus stops across Lagos using the same risk-free model.
However, as volumes grew, new challenges emerged. Supplying directly to small vendors, many of whom operated on credit, exposed Fastizers to losses when sellers relocated and failed to repay their debts. Debby decided a different approach was needed.
Rather than dealing directly with vendors, Fastizers began working through distributors – more stable intermediaries stationed at major bus terminals, who supply informal retailers with a wide range of goods. These distributors often have deep ties with street vendors, and in some cases, even move them from rural areas to urban hubs to sell their products.
With Fun Cookies already known and in demand among street sellers, persuading distributors to carry Fastizers’ products proved relatively straightforward. Shifting to bulk sales through these intermediaries allowed the company to broaden its reach while reducing its exposure to credit risk. Distributors, in turn, supplied Fastizers’ cookies to informal retailers, hawkers, and small outlets, helping the brand further embed itself within Nigeria’s vast informal economy.
Read our full interview with Debby Lawson: How this cookie company cracked the Nigerian market
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