We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chantelle Kuukua Eghan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chantelle Kuukua , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Arts and Cocktail Studio started off initially as a side hustle when I was in my second year in the University. I wanted a way to monetize my skill which was painting and I reached out to my friends and asked them if they would be interested in experiencing painting in a fun way and 11 of them were very interested. I reached out to a friend who owned a restaurant and told him I could bring clients to his restaurant to buy his meals and in exchange he would allow me to use his venue. He agreed, I ended up hosting 25 people instead of the initial 11 because people at the restaurant joined in. The feeling of success and making money from that event drove me to design a long term plan of what the future of sip and paint could be and I realized there was a huge gap where I have to rely on restaurants and split profits with them after each sip and paint event. After 2 years of operating as a mobile sip and paint company, I graduated from the university and decided I wanted to build the first space dedicated to sip and paint where people can come and experience painting with a variety of themes which I couldn’t do with restaurants. I approached my grandparents told them about the idea and they believed in it because they had seen how hardworking I was in achieving my dreams. They gave me a piece of land and I built a 60 seater sip and paint studio and we have hosted more than 1000 people and counting since we opened in April of 2023. Although we aren’t the first sip and paint company, we are the fastest growing and the biggest in Ghana. Most of the other companies that started as early as 2016 are still mobile where they rely on restaurants and split profits and we noticed that our clients always compliment the fact that they don’t have to wait till night and selected days to paint at restaurants which is usually what the restaurants offer since they have other programs. The existence of Arts and Cocktail Studio makes kids, adults and the aged feel included in the arts. The kids find it adventurous and the opportunity to explore and grow, the adults find it as a channel to experience painting and release stress and the aged find it therapeutic so I believe Arts and Cocktail Studio satisfies a wide market and that makes us stand out amongst the rest.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Chantelle Kuukua Eghan and I am the Founder of Arts and Cocktail studio; a sip and paint studio located in Ghana. Arts and Cocktail I would say provides people with the opportunity to experience art in a fun and lively way without needing any prior experience in art. We expose people to art especially painting and they get to send home a masterpiece created by themselves. We also sell Art bags which is our product line. With that, people who do not have time to visit our studio in person can order these art bags and paint at their own time and convenience anywhere at anytime. Also, we work with local artists to promote their art where they host sip and paint events as well as they sell their paintings to clients interested in purchasing. I am most proud of the fact that I didn’t get the opportunity to study art on the Tetiary level but with the little I learnt in high school, I managed to build upon that and created other avenues of using art to generate income. I see that the other sip and paint companies are using Arts and Cocktail as a blue print to elevate their business in terms of marketing style, sip and paint themes and even to the extent of using out pricing system for their clients.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! I cannot emphasize that enough. There are many instances where clients call in to make enquiries and the way I speak to them influences whether we get booked or not. I am never formal on the phone but I am very professional. There was an instance where a very big pastor in my country’s daughter called to make an enquiry, at the time of speaking to her, she hadn’t revealed her identity and she actually never did until I did my research when she gave me her last name. On that phone call she wanted help in deciding how she could throw a birthday party where her friends painted but picnic style. I stayed on the phone; mind you it was after the company’s working hours. I stayed on the phone gave her ideas until I thought she was satisfied and before she hanged up, she had booked us for the birthday party, made down payment and she said “ why does it feel like i have spoken to you before or are we already friends?” And we just laughed then I asked her why? And they she said “ my customer service and the way I just spoke to her didn’t make her feel like she was speaking with a business” she felt at ease to ask all the questions she wanted and for me, I made her comfortable enough to make her ask questions even if she ended up no going through with her booking. For me it was all about being memorable in the minds of my clients. There have been many many instances where customers compliments my customer service before or after booking our services or buying from us. Because of that, they easily refer us to others or they return to use our services again. There was one instance where a customer wanted to cancel her booking for a surprise bachelorette because the other brides maids couldn’t make it but she said “I can’t cancel this booking because of how nice you were to me” so instead of 8 of them painting, I ended up hosting on 3 of them in a 60 seater capacity studio and made them experience the best time of their lives.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Anyone who knows me knows that I am what people would call “multi talented” I know how to do almost anything so I can just start a business with any skill I feel I can use to make money. I won a beauty pageant in 2017, I was assistant captain of my basketball team in university and because I was in my sporting era, I created a clothin line of sports wear using “kente” a traditional African print for the sports bras and the leggings. My goal was simply to make my team mates appear hotter on the basketball field. The other team decided that they too wanted customized kente sports wears so what I did was that since kente had different prints, I assigned 1 print to each team. the design for the sports wears were the same but every team had different prints. Eventually dancers, non sports people and some group of exchange students who just wanted an African souvenir started making orders. But I had a problem, I wasn’t manufacturing the sportswear from scratch, I was only sewing the African prints on them. Unbeknownst to me, the sports wear manufacturers had discontinued the clothes so I couldn’t restock. I tried to get fabrics to sew similar clothings but the quality couldn’t compare and it was becoming expensive so gradually I had to discontinue. Also, I realized I gained competition from a bigger brand that used the same kente design I had but instead of fitting Sportswears they used it on sweat shirts and sweatpants and they dominated very fast because they probably had a lot of marketing money. Arts and Cocktail ended up being the business I started right after My kente sports apparel business collapsed.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.artsandcocktail.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artsandcocktailgh?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Image Credits
All credits are to Arts and Cocktail Studio