Zipporah Wanjiku Kinuthia’s most difficult job when starting the retail shop that would ultimately become Quickmart supermarket was convincing her husband John Kinuthia that the venture made financial sense.
The family had been sustained for nearly two decades by their bar, lodging and butchery business in Mang’u, Nakuru, and he saw no need to sink capital in a venture that had lower margins than his existing enterprise.
After all, business was good, with additional income flowing in from a posho mill and kerosene pump.
In the late 1990s, Zipporah asked a family friend, Tusky’s Supermarket founder Joram Kamau, to help sell the idea to Kinuthia. She aspired to follow a similar path to that of Tuskys, which grew from a general shop in nearby Rongai town into a multi-store supermarket.
Having finally convinced him, they set up their retail store in Nakuru town, and it was beyond Zipporah’s dreams that the business would grow to leave the family with a Sh9.5 billion wealth.
The store started small, and by 2006 had grown into a 3,500 square foot supermarket that they named KIDS Supermarket after Kinuthia and his son Duncan Muiruri Kinuthia, who would later play a lead role in the expansion of the business into a multibillion enterprise they renamed Quickmart.
“We had started out as farmers, before going into the butchery and restaurant, but I did not like that business as much. My dream was to own a supermarket,” says Zipporah, a mother of three.
20 years later, the business that started as a single shop in Nakuru town has grown into a 72-store supermarket chain with an annual turnover of Sh50 billion, and which is listing on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) with a Sh30 billion valuation.
Although John Kinuthia did not live long enough to see his shop join the stock exchange—he passed away in 2016—his family is set for a Sh4.8 billion pay day when they offload half of their 31.83 percent stake or 1.27 billion shares in Quickmart’s IPO that opened last week.
The road from a single shop to a retail chain has come with its fair share of tough decisions and risk taking, explains Zipporah.
The first big move came in 2010, when her son Duncan Kinuthia asked to move to Nairobi and establish a second branch of the retailer in Ruai from scratch. The other family members remained in Nakuru running the first shop.
Getting to this point, she says, was a result of a decision years earlier to involve their children in the business from an early stage and incrementally handing them responsibilities.
In the same vein, Zipporah and John brought in their daughter Gladys Wambui Kinuthia into the retailer, where she started as a cashier before graduating to stock and store management. Today, she sits on Quickmart’s board of directors, and is also a shareholder in the business.
“It is important to bring in the children into the business early, so that as it grows, they grow with it. That’s what we see with the successful Asian entrepreneurs,” said Zipporah.
The expansion of the business could not have been possible without allowing Duncan to venture to the capital and actively grow the brand and outlets.
Despite being the co-founder of the business, Zipporah’s direct stake within the wider family ownership is now smaller than that of her children Duncan and Gladys.
Ahead of the NSE listing, Duncan directly controls a 20.73 percent stake in the Quickmart, equivalent to 829.2 million shares, while Gladys’ stake stands at 4.79 percent, equivalent to 191.5 million shares.
Zipporah and her other son, William Gitau Kinuthia, currently hold stakes of 3.16 percent each in the retailer, equivalent to 126.4 million shares apiece.
Having seen the retailer expand to multiple branches, the next big decision came in 2019, when Quickmart brought on board a strategic investor in the form of private equity fund Adenia Partners.
Adenia bought a 51 percent stake in Quickmart in 2019, shortly after acquiring a 55 percent holding in Quickmart’s fellow homegrown retailer Tumaini Supermarket.
The fund then merged the two businesses under the Quickmart brand in January 2020, retaining 50.8 percent stake while the founders of Quickmart and Tumaini remained with minority stakes of 31.83 percent and 12.02 percent respectively.
The remaining 5.36 percent held by the merged entity’s CEO Peter Kang’iri, who previously served as a financial consultant for both supermarkets and was a key player in bringing in the PE investment and merger.
According to Duncan Kinuthia, his mother took some convincing to agree to hand over control of the business to a new investor, a common feature of founder-led enterprises.
The merger with Tumaini was easier, since the founders had known each other for years.
Like Quickmart, Tumaini was founded in 2006 by business partners Moses Nditika, Joram Njoga and Elijah Okello.
Nditika, who had experience in retail as a store manager at Nakumatt Mega in Nairobi, had actually helped Duncan set up the Ruai outlet by giving him his first retail software, and helping him arrange merchandise in the store.
However, for a family that had spent years carrying out hands-on management of their retail business, handing over the day-today running of the enterprise also came with personal changes for the Kinuthia family.
Suddenly, they could take time off and enjoy vacations and holidays, without worrying about manning the shop.
“We never took time off for days like Christmas and Easter, until Adenia came in. When we stopped going to the shop on Sundays, it felt like sinning,” said Wambui Kinuthia.
Looking back at the Ruai store launch, Zipporah remembers her late husband insisting that she took the scissors and cut the ribbon. He told her to learn how to do it since she would be opening many more in future, and at some point some would be opened before she found out they were in the pipeline.
“Today, I sometimes get hear of new branches after they have been opened,” says Zipporah.
“We now have shops where the staff don’t know me, where I go in as a customer, do my small shopping and leave without being recognised.”
