I took a 2 week 3D design course and this formed the foundation of my career and everything that I am working on today.
Hi Nashon, what’s your background and what has been your career?
Hi, I’m Nashon Mutua, I did Mechatronics Engineering at JKUAT (Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology) class of 2018. After completing my degree, I specialized in industrial design: generating CAD models, 3D design and the likes.
I would probably have never gotten into design if it were not for a beginner course I did while I was in my second year at university. There is a company that had come to Kenya and they were offering a 3D design course on topics such as 3D modelling, Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD, my father paid for the training, I took the 2 week course and this formed the foundation of my career and everything that I am working on today.
I also did attachment at various different companies and while at it, I was using the opportunity to try and identify gaps that my skills would be able to fill. Coupled with my stints working at Gearbox (a Maker space) and Burn manufacturing, this also played a role in the business that I am running currently.
What are you working on currently and how did the idea come up?
Currently I run a business called Savannah Laser Cutting Hut.
We have specialized in metal fabrication. What this means is that if you have a model, pattern or product that needs to be made using metal as the main material, we will take that idea, design it, prototype it and bring it to life using equipment such as laser cutting machines, bending machines, powder coating to mention a few.
We fabricate simple designs such as company logos on metal, work on decorative balconies and doors for residential construction projects, motorcycle parts, to building complex equipment and machinery from the ground up such as a plastic shredder.
The inspiration to work on the company came about while I was still working at Gearbox. While I was there I would do designs for companies in the construction industry after which we would take them to another company that would do the cutting on metal. I realized that just one design would be laser cut onto almost 500 pieces of metal sheets and this would translate to millions in Kenya shillings for just one small project. So I thought if I could do the design and have my own machine, that would definitely be something.
How did you set up the business?
Luckily for me, I had already worked in this industry for a number of years, I had the skills, the technical know how and I knew a few people as well, so all I needed was some capital to get the first laser cutting machine.
This is where collaboration comes in, I teamed up with a few close people and cousins who believed in the vision and together we were able to get some funds put together after much hustle and got the operations going.
Ideally for such a business you need to be good with 3D design and 3D software such as Solid works, Inventor etc. After that, knowledge of operating equipment such as laser cutters, CNC bender and doing welding will be required. These are skills that anyone with an interest can acquire.
How did you get your first customers/clients?
Being that I had been in the industry already, we managed to get our first clients through referrals, even before we had a workshop.
But we have also had to advertise our business quite a bit, mostly through channels such as Jiji, Facebook and Instagram where we post the products and projects that we have worked on.
What are some challenges that you have faced and how did you overcome them?
Our business like any other has very many challenges:
Sourcing for the right materials and actually receiving them as the supplier said you would, was one we experienced early on because sometimes we would receive what we hadn’t ordered.
Training your people to be able to deliver in the quality that the client expects without much supervision has also been a really big challenge, but we are getting there with this one.
Being that we are still a small company, sometimes we are not able to handle some of the really big orders thus we have to pass these over to the big guys as we continue expanding our own operations.
The cost of materials has also gone up over the years and don’t get me started on the taxes.
We overcome these challenges by innovating around our own processes within the company and we get better at it with every passing day.
How is the company doing so far financially and in terms of customer acquisition?
The business is doing well.
This is going to be our first complete business year and so far we have managed to recoup the initial investment made. Without disclosing much, we have done up of $50K and have grown the team from 3 people to 8 people currently.
In terms of customers, at this point we have worked with a hundred plus individuals and businesses, some one time and others recurring.
What are some of the mistakes you made?
We have made many mistakes, a lot.
The main one would be how we priced our services I.E costing. Especially while we were still green, a client would request for a quote immediately and we would either give a price that’s too low or one that’s too high. If we quoted too high, the customer would disappear and if quoted low, we would later realize that the work we did was too much as compared to what we had been paid.
The other thing is timelines. Sometimes we would give short timelines for work that would take longer than earlier anticipated thus we would have too much backlog and a lot of pissed off customers.
What are some of your future plans?
Getting more machines so that we can handle certain complex projects and getting a bigger space as well so that we can manage the big projects as well.
But the main one would be to empower the team in terms of skill acquisition. Get our team members to do professional courses so that they can do their work even better.
If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
I would not say it’s a regret because we learn from our mistakes, but the one thing I would do way earlier would be to let go of fear and just dive in, especially when it comes to making business decisions that have currently impacted our company positively, that could have been executed way earlier. The fear was very real but we learn to overcome it with time, with time comes growth.
Any recommendations in terms of who to follow, YouTube videos to watch, a useful website or books to read (learning resources)?
What has really helped me is making friends and connecting with people within my industry and those who have been in business for a while.
A good example is Mitesh, who owns Orbit Engineering, his advice has come a long way and I’m even currently reading a book by Marcus Rashford “Champion” that was gifted to me by him. The book has some great pointers especially for young people on how to embrace failure, learning and growing from life’s experiences.
Where can people go to know more about you and your work?
You can check out our work on the company website, lasercuttinghut.co.ke
I’m also on X (Twitter) as nashonmutua
Getting personal, what does success look like to you as an individual and at what point would you say you have achieved said success?
When the company is running without me having to be there constantly supervising, this would be success, in terms of the business. I get some time to do motivational speeches 😁.
I would also define success in terms of family, to see my kids grow up to become decent human beings, take part in the business or start their own things, to make a difference in our parents lives, this would make me extremely happy.
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