Her entrepreneurship journey began with the production of a messy floor polish, but she never gave up.
Eighteen years later, Grace Kgomongwe, a former nurse, is the managing director of a women-only construction company, Little Rock Trading, with two successful projects worth more than R20-million under her belt.
The transformation from nursing, which she practised for 20 years, was not an easy one, motivated by the realisation that the low-paying job she loved would mean retirement with nothing much, so in 1992, Kgomongwe began to look for other opportunities.
“My brother came up with the idea of manufacturing domestic cleaning chemicals and I agreed to give it a try,” she says. After a little research, they decided to start with floor polish, and found out that wax was the main ingredient.
So she approached Sasol, the integrated energy and chemicals company, for help. The company gave her the ingredients and basic formulation for floor polish.
“I tried making the polish using the ingredients and the formula they gave me — it was a mess, I don’t think anyone could have used it.” Not giving up, she asked Sasol to show her the entire process, taking her through its production laboratory, a process that took two working days.
“When I got out, I had my own formula. I tried it and it worked this time.” The door was open for the nurse, whose first customers were local schools. She says the uniqueness of the formula is what made it a hit.
“I knew what people want in floor polish because I use it.” The business was going so well, Kgomongwe had to relocate to an industrial area, doing nursing part time. In 1994, she quit her profession to manufacture polish full-time.
Eleven years on, the market was changing. Too many companies were making floor polish, then people begun using ceramic tiles that do not require polish, and the market was getting smaller by the day.
Not used to sitting around awaiting for bad news, “I decided to look for something else to do before my polish-making business went down the drain,” she says. That is when her sister-in-law, Thelma Botolo, the chairperson of Little Rock Trading, prompted her to buy a brick-making plant.
The business introduced Kgomongwe to the construction industry. Before long, she was involved in Little Rock. “We began to make bricks in 2005 and in 2007 my sister-in-law invited me to join Little Rock.”
Little Rock Trading was registered in 2003 as a close corporation owned by eight women from Segwaelane village, most of them teachers. From the beginning, even before Kgomongwe’s involvement, it was engaged in small, barely profitable construction jobs.
Kgomongwe changed all that: “My first target was to go for tenders in construction.” An opportunity came up in a Sunday paper in mid-2007: an open tender for converting old mine hostels into family units.
To their surprise, Little Rock was not the only company interested in the tender, more than 200 others were going after the contract. The tender was put out by Lonmin Mines, which was upgrading infrastructure in the community in which it operates.
“There were so many, some of us couldn’t even get tender documents. We had to go to town to get them,” she says. But Little Rock members were determined to try their luck. Filling in the tender documents was no small task; they had to hire quantity surveyors because they didn’t even know how to price the project.
In the end, Lonmin Mines granted the job of converting 13 old mine hostels at Wonderkop in the North West into 136 family units to Little Rock, a company without any experience of handling a project of such magnitude. The project was valued at R19-million.
“It was open-minded. It took a big risk. I believe if you chase an opportunity, you have a chance of getting it. You just have to have someone to take that chance with you,” said Kgomongwe. After getting the tender, Little Rock’s members had mixed feelings: they were happy, excited and afraid.
They were faced with three big challenges: financial constraints, a lack of skilled labour and a lack of experience. Financial constraints were their biggest hurdle.
“We knew how the banks worked: they would not give u money without us putting up assets as collateral. We had dealt with them before,” she says. Kgomongwe was so committed to the project, she thought of putting up her beautiful family home as collateral.
“I would if I had to, because all the other members are from the village and the banks would not take their houses as collateral for the loan.” She had the support of her husband, Lebethe. Thankfully, it was not necessary.
Lonmin Mines introduced Little Rock to Nurcha, a construction finance company that provides bridging finance to contractors and developers involved in the construction of subsidised and affordable housing, community facilities and infrastructure. After a few meetings between the two, everything worked out.
The project that Little Rock was working on fitted in well with Nurcha’s objective to provide construction finance and support for contractors and developers who cannot easily access finance from conventional financial institutions.
On the other hand, “Nurcha had what we needed most: financial and technical support. Luckily, we had priced the project right, so after its assessment it agreed to work with us on the project,” says Kgomongwe.
Nurcha was in a newly formed R200-million funding partnership with Futuregrowth to support small and emerging contractors that had won tenders from either the public or private sectors. Little Rock took more than a year to complete the project, having at least five members on site to supervise the work, while Kgomongwe handled its financial administration.
Showing its satisfaction with the job, Lonmin Mines hired the company for another one, the refurbishment of a primary school in Rustenburg. Other jobs followed: Little Rock is now on its fourth project for Lonmin Mines. Though the construction industry is male-dominated, Kgomongwe does not see it as an obstacle.
“When I get into any situation, I do not look at myself as a woman, I look at myself as a person. I ask ‘how do I solve this’ as a person, not as a woman. If you don’t bring it up, you won’t see it,” she says. But, she says, being a women-only group means there is more focus on Little Rock than other construction companies, which means they have to work harder.
“You always have to go the extra mile to convince them that you can do it and do it well. It’s also an advantage. Everyone wants to be associated with the development of women,” she says. But she warns that that attitude should not make women relax.
“We should be competitive and say ‘it does not matter’ and get into anything on an equal foot.” She has the same view about black economic empowerment. She does not consider herself a beneficiary of the policy.
‘Whenever I go out there, I don’t make use of it.” BEE or no BEE, Little Rock has definitely changed the life of the former nurse and that of the eight other women in the company.