Nairobi News

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Marketer who owns an online beauty shop


Clara Nyambura Njuguna is a sales co-ordinator at a city hotel. From 8am to 5pm, six days a week, she works on market strategies, handling contracts and contacting clients.

She loves marketing because of the exposure it brings. It is her passion for sales and her results-oriented nature that have seen her bulldoze her way to her current job. 

Clara also owns an online beauty shop, Absolute Essence.

Before she had her daughter 18 months ago, she was content with the route her career was taking but parenthood brought with it more responsibilities.

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“As much as I love meeting various people, I needed to make more money and fast,” she said.

For as long as she can remember, Clara has had a passion for beauty and women’s products. 

From mingling with women in her job, she knew that the average Kenyan woman loved to smell nice and she knew she had a ready market. 

Once she had established the desired business, she set out to look for suppliers. 

To make her clients have confidence in her products, she needed to first be confident in them and so she took weeks testing various products on her skin to check their quality.

When she was sure of her supplier, she registered her business and using her savings, she imported her first batch of lotions, perfumes, body creams and shower gels. She advertised on social media. 

Quality cosmetics are pricey and the money she had was not enough. She used catalogues to market herself and only imported the more costly products on order.

At first, she made the deliveries herself during her free time, but she has now employed riders who do the deliveries. 

She admitted that juggling the two jobs and parenting hasn’t been easy.

She manages by dedicating her days to her main job and taking an hour or two in the evenings to interact with her clients on social media. Sundays, she said, were strictly family time.

She hopes that her business will grow into a one-stop beauty shop that will also offer women’s clothing as well as accessories.