Partner Perspectives: Home_254

These blog posts feature the perspectives of some of the amazing partner organisations who are a focal part of our Immersive Experiences. At Emerging World, the work of our partners inspires the participants in our programmes in life-defining ways and challenges them to think differently about the things that deeply affect people and truly drive change. Our work also supports our partners to shift the way they work and have a greater impact. These posts allow our partners to share their stories and perspectives of the work they do and the impact this is having in communities and in the world more broadly! It is our hope that their experiences and insights will inspire us to look deep and explore ways we can do more for the world!

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The third in our series is….

Home_254

My name is Brian Jura, Founder & CEO of Home_254 an apparel business in Nairobi, Kenya that embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of the youth of our city and meets an important need in this region, employment! Through our apparel, we inspire others with the feeling of belonging!

Home_254 participated in the Go with Maersk programme in 2018 and 2019 a flagship two-year training and development programme for newly recruited global talent within Maersk. As part of this programme, Maersk brought a cohort of about 130 individuals to Kenya to connect them with their purpose as a company and the impact they have on the world. During that time, a small team of the Maersk participants worked with us over three and a half days to support us to tackle the challenge of how to scale up our production and thus increase our footprint.

What was impactful about having the global pool of talented and passionate young professionals was that I started to shift my thinking around my role in the business. I had thought that I could do everything by myself wearing all the different hats required to grow a business from the ground up. I started to see the need to delegate a lot more to my team and work more cohesively to achieve our ambitious growth plans. In addition, an interesting session during the Maersk programme on Systems Thinking brought to light that I needed to see my business as a system. This helped our small working group to explore the inter-relationships, perspectives and boundaries in the business and how they impacted on one another.

We identified the need to expand our current operating space which meant relocating to a larger and accessible space and building an understanding around the fabric shipment cycle, which at the time was part of the challenge we were experiencing.

Six months later, we have scaled up our retail footprint by setting up a brand new spacious and beautiful retail space and creating a vibrant online presence. This has given us an opportunity for more interaction with our clients to understand their need and has enabled us to be more responsive. We have also streamlined our fabric acquisition processes, managed better our inventory and aligned work roles to ensure role clarity and that each member is playing to their strengths.

We continue to grow and expand our reach and this programme is certainly one of the best things that has happened to me and Home_254 team! Onwards and upwards!

Interested in joining our Partner Network

Click here