Naivas ....'saves you money'!........clearly NOT!

The price of extension leads in Naivas

I don’t know how I feel about Naivas. I know that you need money to make money and these guys clearly do have some money. There is Naivas everywhere you turn in Nairobi.

The shops are overstaffed and their staff don’t wear uniform. I personally think that supermarket staff should be uniform for easy of identification by customers. Imagine if you were to go ask a fellow shopper where you can locate a bar of soap and she happens to be Wanjiku from Nyeri? Anyway, this is how Naivas like to do

As part of my own amusement I like to look at certain item prices and blog about them for no apparent reason. Last week I went shopping for a mosquito Net. The cheapest was 450 shillings whilst the most expensive was 2,050 shilling. I am not sure what the difference is apart from the fact that one is medicated and blue whilst the other is non-medicated and white. The fact is that such price differential is just unjustified; the quality looked the same. The cheaper one (which I bought) was made in Kenya whilst the other was sourced from China. It begged the question how come some Charities advertise in the UK media that it costs £10 (1,300 shillings) to buy a net for a disadvantage poor African? I wonder why cannot they buy the nets from the Kenyan Companies and am sure if they bought in bulk they would get each at 300 Shillings.

The other item of interest was the power extension cables. Each go for 1,500 shillings and if you are lucky you can get one for 2,400 shillings. I cannot help but think that I buy the same thing in IKEA at £4 less than 600 shillings. As the taxes are higher in UK than they are in China and Kenya I would expect the same item to go for less than 700 shillings; but I am sure Mr Naivas pocket are well lined with the shillings.

Anyway there is my rant at Naivas – ‘saves you money’ is the tag line!