She messaged me on a Tuesday evening.
"I think I need to close my shop. I'm selling every day but I have nothing to show for it," she said in a depressing tone.
Bimpe sells fabrics and ready-made outfits she buys from Lagos, mostly through WhatsApp, and she also owns a small stall in Dugbe market. She has been doing this since 2021. By March this year, she had over 60 active customers, was processing 15 to 20 orders every week — but was still borrowing ₦10,000 from her sister to restock.
The first question I asked her was: "How much money do your customers owe you right now?"
She said: "Maybe around ₦40,000–₦50,000. I'm not sure."
We reside in the same city — Ibadan — so we met physically. We sat down together for two hours on a Saturday morning and went through her DMs, voice notes, a torn notebook, pieces of small papers with random orders, and the mental list she had been carrying for months.
That was when we discovered that the real amount she was owed was ₦127,400.
₦127,400 sitting in the pockets of people she was still smiling at. Still selling to. Still giving new orders on credit — because she genuinely did not know they hadn't paid for the last one.
One customer — a woman who ordered 3 Ankara sets in January — owed her ₦34,000. Bimpe had delivered everything. The woman paid ₦10,000 as deposit and went quiet. Bimpe forgot. Life continued. 9 weeks passed.
Another customer owed ₦18,500 from December. Bimpe had a voice note. No record of payment. She wasn't even sure if the outfit had been collected.
There were 11 customers just like this.
And because she had no system, she was also losing orders — a customer would message in the morning, she'd reply "I'll send you the details later," get buried in 7 other chats, and completely forget. She lost at least 4 customers that way in February alone.
She wasn't a bad businesswoman. She wasn't lazy. She was just running a growing business with nothing but memory and hope.
That Saturday, I built her an app. Simple, clean, lives on her phone. No laptop. No training. No monthly fee.
By the end of April — exactly five weeks later — Bimpe had recovered ₦89,000 of her outstanding balance. Not from new customers. From people who already owed her, who she could now track and follow up with professionally.
She restocked without borrowing from her sister for the first time in 7 months.
Bimpe's only regret was that she didn't have it in 2021 when she started. Don't wait until you're almost closing before you get a system.
