How lockdown partnership led to booming business in personalised doormats

Starting your own small business is never an easy journey, especially in an environment where pressure on the consumer rand keeps increasing.

Gugs Mhlungu chats to one business owner who has an inspirational and encouraging story to tell.

Tumelo Selikane is the co-founder of Inspired Doormats, a company birthed through a chance online connection during the COVID pandemic.

The lockdown put paid to his job with an events company, but fortunately Selikane found a business partner when he was browsing social media.

"At the time I didn't know this man from a bar of soap! He'd posted an image and asked a simple question: Does anybody know how to make personalised doormats? I had no idea, but decided to take a gamble and find a way to do this. Then, lo and behold, we connected, found ourselves a good supplier and essentially just experimented."

"Five years later, here we are with a live website and an Instagram page that has 11,000 followers... We've grown year by year, exponentially."

What makes their company stand out against competitors?

The differentiating factor is that they personalise virtually anything that someone would like to display on their entrance mat, with a range of writing options, colours and materials, Selikane says.

Inspired Doormats services residential households as well as companies, from offices to factories.

Their clients include major brands like Vodacom and BMW.

"We offer a coir doormat which is a brown, grassy doormat; a dirt trapper which is a soft fabric mat as well as a berber point which is a very durable, hard mat particularly suited for businesses."

Selikane rates building trust with potential clients as one of the main factors to drive success for a new company, particularly in a country where people have become so wary of being scammed.

"With our business almost 100% based online we rely on interaction either on Instagam, via Whatsapp, or emails through our website. The moment you give somebody a quote or invoice and ask for payment they become wary - they really want to be engaging with a human being. We're at a point in our journey where we want to automate more, so the basic challenge is to try and prove or convince someone that we're a trusted source."

"What we do to try and overcome this trust issue is to share our five-star ratings, share all the reviews that we get. We also create ads that feature us as the founders, videos where either I am talking or my business partner is talking, and showcase our products live."

Along with this, customer service is of course also key, and the compnay prides itself on the level it provides, he says.

"We make sure that from the first point of contact you get the customisation, you get the feeling that someone is really paying attention to you, trying to see how best to make your design work.... and then after that first order we ensure customer continuity."

To listen to Tumelo Selikane in conversation with Gugs Mhlungu on 702's Weekend Breakfast, click on the audio link below: