By Ebele Orakpo
One cannot talk about Event Planning business in Nigeria without mentioning Mrs. Funke Bucknor-Obruthe, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Zapphaire Events, an events consultancy, marketing, planning and management company. She is one of the pioneers of the industry in this part of the globe.

The Law graduate of the University of Lagos who spoke to Vanguard in her Lagos office recently, noted that as a service industry, event planning requires minimal start-up capital. She said the initial challenge was convincing people of the need for an events planner. Excerpts:

Upon completion of her first degree in law at the University of Lagos, Mrs. Funke Bucknor-Obruthe went on to the Nigerian Law School and finished in year 2000. Thereafter, she worked briefly with a law firm and an advertising company before going into full-time event planning business.

“I worked in a law firm, Matthew Daniel and Balogun Law Firm for about three weeks. I just wanted to see if law was what I wanted to do and after three weeks, I realised that that was not what I wanted to do so I stopped working. From there, I went to work with an advertising agency called Tie Communications. I was there for a year.

It was while there that I realised I wanted to go into events planning so I started my event planning company – Zapphaire Events – in 2003,” she said.

On how much she used in starting the business, the awards-winning events planner said: “Well, when we started, Events planning was more of a service industry so we did not really need a lot of start-up to do it.

I took the money that I saved up while working and also got some from my family and friends and used it to do things like my business cards, transport, branding materials – folders, brochures- so the start-up capital was really low. And because I was having repeat business, it was easy to keep on ploughing back into the business.”

Speaking on the challenges she faced, Mrs Bucknor-Obruthe said: “At the initial stage, it was more of convincing people they needed an events planner. When I started, there was nothing like event planning in Nigeria. So, convincing people that ‘you know what? You need an event planner for your event and we can do it,’ was hard so to me, that was the initial challenge – getting people to believe that they need an events planner.

The challenge right now is getting people to believe that you are the event planner for them. There are so many event planners now so they also have to make sure that you are the right planner for them. Again, getting loyal staff that will work with you for a while, not those that will want to leave and start their own business after a few months.

I think this is probably because the entry barrier is very low. Anybody can just go in and say ‘I want to be an events planner. Another challenge for me right now is just making sure there are no mediocre persons in the industry. The people in the industry should be people that are good at what they do and they do it well because it gives event planning a bad name when they don’t. For me, those are the major challenges before and now.”

On how she gets her clients, the Zapphaire Events boss said it is mostly through referrals. “The thing is that if we did a good job, a lot of times clients see what you’ve done and they are like ‘oh, I want you to come and do my event. So it is basically through referrals.

We do all kinds of events – weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, house-warming, album launch, coronation, funerals, milestones, corporate events, annual general meetings, brand launch, experimental marketing, PR services – once it’s an event, we organise it.”

According to the award-winning event planner,  charges depend on what the client wants and the number of guests expected. “The thing is that every event is different depending on the number of people you are expecting.

You can spend as low as N1 million for a wedding or as high as N50 million. So it all depends on what you want, the way you want to do it, the number of people. So many factors go into the cost of an event,” she noted.

In her bid to rid the industry of mediocrity, Mrs Bucknor-Obruthe set up a training school where event planners are trained. “We train event planners. We train them in skills, i.e. what they need to be real professionals. We might as well teach people the right way to do this. As long as you are a graduate, you can enroll. The training lasts for three months and the fees vary depending on what the student wants to do,” she stated.

Asked where she hopes to see Zapphaire Events in five years’ time, she said: “Five years from now? For me, I wouldn’t like to think of five years, I just like to think one year at a time. Zapphaire started as a one-man business.

It was just me, but now, Zapphaire has a staff strength of over 15 people and over 300 casual staff so the question should be: What do you want to do next year? How do you want to make it better? We are just doing many new things in the industry. We have been developing in different ways. So I don’t have to just say five years. I just take each year as it comes.

One of the things we are going to be doing this year is the launching of our book called The Essential Bridal Handbook. It’s a book I just wrote for brides. It was put together with a few friends of mine from the industry. It was one of the things we had wanted to do for a while and we did it this year. That is something new that Zapphaire is doing but then, we want to go international, we cannot just remain at the national level.”