Tech guru clicking profit in fashion store

PHOTO | BILLY MUTAI Fashion Sprout founder and CEO James Mathenge. Mr Mathenge uses data to findout the next big hit in the fashion industry and then goes on to liaise with manufacturers to make the designs.  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

• Mr Mathenge is the founder and chief executive of Fashion Sprout, an online fashion store that features trendy items from indie brands and local boutiques. His entity specialises in women shoes and handbags.
• Mr Mathenge’s business has presence in Mexico, Nicaragua, Brazil, Portugal, Canada and Australia. These country arms are run by his partners. Regularly, the team meets to plan how to face the competition posed by other well established brands in the fashion industry.

By GRIFFINS OMWENGA
More by this Author

James Wachira Mathenge loves fashion. His insatiable appetite for things trendy saw him quit plum jobs in blue chip tech firms where he worked as a software engineer.

Mr Mathenge, 30, is the founder and chief executive of Fashion Sprout, an online fashion store that features trendy items from indie brands and local boutiques. His entity specialises in women shoes and handbags.

The outlet hand-picks select women shoes and handbags from independent brands and designers from all over the world, he told Money.

Before going private, Mr Mathenge used to earn over Sh3 million in salary per year, but Fashion Sprout makes almost five times that amount in profits per annum.

In 2007, he joined IBM as a software test engineer for the firm’s research centre in San Jose, California. A year later he moved to Nokia in the same capacity at Sunnyvale, California, before Barracuda networks welcoming him in 2009 as a systems engineer.

“I just wanted to get into something more satisfying to me and that is why I ventured into fashion because it’s what I love,” he says.

And in 2010, armed with a soft loan from his former employer Jim Jorgesen, he opened his first shop in San Fransisco: “I used to work for him as an intern at his firms, OIVMAIL and Discovery Zone, and later I went back to him with my concept and he advanced me a loan of over Sh20 million which I used to open Fashion Sprout branches together with other friends.”

Jim Jorgensen is a US billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist who practices in the areas of labour, employment, banking and business law.

EXPANDED BUSINESS

Today, Mr Mathenge’s business has presence in Mexico, Nicaragua, Brazil, Portugal, Canada and Australia. These country arms are run by his partners. Regularly, the team meets to plan how to face the competition posed by other well established brands in the fashion industry.

Mr Mathenge works with low-end designers who are not really popular but they have been the story behind the success of his firm which opened shop in Kenya in October last year, and is set to expand across the East African region.

Located in Nairobi’s High Ridge, the entrepreneur says Kenyan women are fast embracing the new shoe store with monthly sales between Sh700,000 to Sh1 million.

“People want unique but affordable designs. The market usually has the perception that the good things come only from the already entrenched designs in the market which are often very expensive,” he says.

For one to enter the competitive fashion industry, he says, you need to have a keen eye for unique trends and that means knowing what is attracting your target customers and what the next blockbuster in the fashion world might be.

“I just realised that I love crunching figures after collecting colossal sums of data which gave me an edge when I was beginning this company,” said Mr Mathenge.

“Our business model makes us stand out,” he says, adding, “unlike other shoe outlets that just go out there in the streets to look at what is now selling and rush to stock such, Fashion Sprout relies on data sets.”

SOFTWARE ENGINEER

This is where the entrepreneur uses his expertise as a software engineer to analyse data for historical trends before projecting on what is likely to be the next big hit.

After establishing a particular trend, his firm links directly with the shoe or handbag makers to supply the target product.

Such data is gathered from online opinions in social sites Facebook and twitter. For instance, latest statistics indicated that the design that Fashion Sprout had over 42000 likes on Facebook, just three months after the shop opened in Kenya.

“This has been particularly very important because we project the next trend by looking at what very many people have interacted with,” he quips.

“At Fashion Sprout, we combine style, quality and luxury with the expertise of fashion industry insiders to create a one-of-a-kind shopping experience. Our goal is to offer access to major fashion trends at value-oriented prices,” said Mr Mathenge.