Auto Dome is a car dealership in Nigeria that sells all kinds of automobile both brand new and fairly used, Auto Dome also offers After Sales service to her customers and outsiders. Speaking with CLIFFSIMEON AKALONU, Mrs. Adefunke Anurukem, the Managing Director, AUTO DOME Nig Ltd, said, life itself is a continuous learning process and she has learnt to be tenacious and honest in business, I have learnt to talk less and listen more, I have also learnt how to advise people who come to me for auto advise.
It is not easy to have the capacity to convince someone on a particular brand he is used to, “you can see that the satisfaction is endless” She said.
Mrs. Adefunke said that the key success to every business is product knowledge and that is my key success in auto business. It is not good that you are doing a business and you don’t have knowledge of the products you are selling, you don’t know the auto policies guiding the auto market; You don’t know how the automotive industry its being run, what are the trainings to go for and you don’t ask questions. Don’t claim you know it all. Product knowledge and been abreast to the latest technology are part of my key success.
She said that, Manpower, funding are great challenges in the auto business because the business we do is not that feeble in terms of finance its lucrative and needs huge amount of money to run it. If for example, you inject 10million in a clothing line, automatically you have done massive support to that business line; but here where we are, 10million can only give you two fairly used cars, so we need financing from the government to keep moving.
The high rate of import duty and complete impound of vehicles by the customs without checking if the customs duty of that car have been duly paid, is another challenge.
Before, we are battling with 5% vat and now there is increase to 7.5% value added tax and all these are to our own detriment. Another challenge steering us at the face is the port delay, as I speak with you here now, we have uncleared goods at the port for weeks, and up till now nothing has been done which is making buying power to reduce. All this is to tell you that the ease of doing business in our ports is still word of the mouth, otherwise not been effective even as it is a presidential order.
I read in the newspapers that, the federal government recently doled out some billions for auto assemblers in the country. This is good but we have to tell ourselves the truth. “If this amount could be rolled out to assemblers who are mostly not Nigerians, then what happened to the local auto manufactures we have in the country, that needs to be encouraged”.
I can vividly tell you that the auto dealers association in this nation is not functional and that is why you can see everyone even a car washer, selling cars by the road side, everybody is bringing in anything to sell, even, those that do not meet up with standards.
There is no guidance to auto dealership in Nigeria and that is why “we the women in the business wants to take it up by ourselves and make contributions in the auto dealership control in the country and make our grievances known to the government.
She said that, Automobile sector is one of the greatest contributor to the Nigerian economy because everything about it, is done within the country even the money we use in importing them passes through the local banks.
The automobile industry is volatile, sometimes; unpredictable. The number one thing that can help revive the automobile industry in Nigeria is regulation. This will make the industry look healthier because there is a lot that is embedded with the automotive industry.
Auto Dome is 10years this 2020″, we are very excited and optimistic that this year is going to be one of our best year in terms of structure, in terms of business, in terms of overall turnover sales, in terms of expansion. We also have loads of packages like more locations to be opened, more business lines to be added.