Nigeria: How this snack food company won over informal shopkeepers

In Nigeria, informal retail channels account for 90% of consumer goods sales. Discover how cookie company Fastizers persuaded these vendors to stock its products.

Debby Lawson, founder and COO of Fastizers, speaking during launch of the company’s Nibit brand.

This article is an excerpt from our latest book 'How we made it in Africa II: Real stories of entrepreneurs turning opportunity into profit'

One Saturday in 2010, Gbola Lawson was knocking on the doors of small brick-and-mortar stores in Lagos – Nigeria’s megacity of roughly seventeen million people – trying to persuade shopkeepers to place cookies on their shelves. Although he held a full-time job in banking, he was helping his girlfriend, Debby (now his wife), grow the retail footprint of her fledgling one-person cookie business, Fastizers.