We were lucky to catch up with Ronald and Kevin Nganso recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ronald and Kevin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

We constantly organize giveaways where we give out hundreds of our products and that’s what we like the most. Our company is mostly online on Amazon, Walmart and Superstore Canada and we sell in Canada, USA and Mexico.
Meeting people face to face doesn’t happen at all and for us to do that, we organize giveaways in our headquarter in Calgary. People come from everywhere and they can grab whatever they want.
We have families coming in and we see their joy and excitement…. That really make us happy. We talk to the people, they share their experience with our products and we are there to connect with the people. Putting a face behind our brand.
We have more of those giveaways at the end of the year where people are just very excited.
We love that very much.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Ronald Kevin Nganso and I’m the founder and CEO of Kéviji and Students Pro Painters. When I was in the university, we really struggled to find jobs that will work for us with our classes. That’s when I decided to create Students Pro Painters. A painting company where I hired my classmates.
When I was younger, my Dad wanted us to learn everything and he would build houses all across the city and ask us to paint. We learned pretty much everything about painting.
I would get contracts and bring my friends with me and drop them off in different houses where I would teach them on the jobs.
We were busy and we were getting many jobs because our customers knew we were all students and they will even ask for our student ID when we arrive on site. We would also get a lot of tips and people were just very happy to hire us.
Each one of my friends finished the summer with over $10,000 each and that was a lot 7 years ago. We would work only on summer time generating over $100,000 in profit. At work, I will buy food for everyone and drive around different houses we were working on that day to check on the job and work with the team.
It was very fun and to this date, my former classmates still remind me of that and everyone is so grateful.

Since we were only painting on summer, I wanted to do something else during the rest of the year. That’s when I started importing many products from Africa, Asia etc. My first product was the wireless headphone. It was new and on trend at the time and I found a manufacturer that could make them and I started selling them from my basement. I would find customers using Facebook Marketplace alone. I was selling a pair for $30. That was the perfect price for the masses and the business was booming. I would run out of stock all the time and the shipments were taking too long to arrive. Each day I would be selling about $2000 and in just a couple of weeks, I would run out and wait for over a month for a new shipment to arrive. I was dealing with that problem for about a year.
Later on, I started to see the competition growing and that’s when I decided to brand my products. That’s when Kéviji was born. I started calling my wireless headphones Kpods and I also added additional products to the brand such as Selfie Sticks, Wireless Power banks, Portable blenders, Phone holders for cars, African art products etc.
People loved my products and my selection of products was just coming from myself. Many manufacturers will show me different products and the ones that I thought were interesting, I would have them put my brand on it and send them over. At the time, I wouldn’t really study the market or anything like that. It was just about me. If I love the product myself as a consumer, I will add it to my product line. It was just that simple. I also wanted to make sure that the price point is very affordable for everyone and mostly students. I always had the student life in mind knowing that students don’t have money and my products had to be affordable for students.

Few years later, my sister that has been on Amazon for very long suggested me to start selling on Amazon FBA so I don’t have to be home all the time to sell my products. Amazon would sell them for me and I would just have to send them an inventory.

That was a game changer for me. So my manufacturers started sending my products directly to Amazon and Amazon will handle everything there.
Few years later, I got invited to sell at Walmart and I also join Superstore at the same time.
My only Job was then just to run ads. I would run my ads on instagram, Facebook and Google but I will get my customers to order directly from my website and I will get Amazon to ship. Even the orders coming from Walmart and Superstore, I would also get Amazon to ship them. It was a lot cheaper to use Amazon as they will do the packaging, customer service and handle the returns.
On our website Keviji.ca, our top selling product is now our Winter Hat and Canada is also our top selling country due to the cold weather.
We are still expending everyday and growing as fast as we can.
Our next project is to have some retail presence but we also know how dangerous that is. We are currently exploring that avenue and looking at all the challenges we might face.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I’m always concern about the financing aspect of my business and I will always have a back up plan. Initially I was working for a trucking company. When I started the painting company, I would pick up my classmates at around 5AM, drop them off at different houses that we had to paint that day and I will drive to my main job where I had to start at 8AM.

For painting, the customer will buy the supplies and we will just come and paint. So I wouldn’t really need any additional money but in my head, I was always paranoid that something might go wrong and I needed to always be ready financially. That’s why I had a main job as a backup.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Few years back, I got into a relationship that I thought was just a destiny. We actually met when she was coming to buy a product from me as she didn’t want to wait for Amazon to ship and we were also living in the same city. So she contacted me and I agreed that she could just come pick it up in my house then I just decided to deliver the product myself. I went there and that night, we sat in my car for over an hour just talking. Everything was just so simple and a week later, we were dating. She became my primary focus. Everything was great. We would travel and have all the fun. I even went ahead and thought we could buy a house. We started looking for weeks and when we finally found one, I decided to buy it. A week before the possession date, she said maybe we should take a break and that was the end of it. No explanation or no reasons I was given. 3 days later, she was with another guy which made me believe that was the reason of us breaking up.

My life went upside down after that and for over a year, I was a mess. I would just be spending money everywhere, buy everything and travel everywhere just to escape and that was taking a big hit on my business. Even when we were together, my business wasn’t my priority anymore. It was just about her. I was loosing a lot on the business side but that didn’t matter as long as she was happy. I would run out of stock and not reorder, I wouldn’t solve issues with manufacturers and customers. Everything was just falling apart but I didn’t really care cause we were happy.

To this date, I think that was the biggest mistake anyone can make and I promised myself to never put myself in such situations again.

In my life, I have always been very strong and focus but I couldn’t recognize myself and I still can’t believe everything that happened.

One thing I learned is that I can’t imagine my future with someone else in it when I have no control over it. My business is my future and I have full control of it.

In the entrepreneurial path that we chose, relationships kill big dreams. So I will advise to choose wisely and be aware.

Contact Info:

• Website: Keviji.ca
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keviji.ca/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100047933028719
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T4itNqb3tiU
• Other: My YouTube Channel is mostly about me and what I like and my day to day life. I love flying my drone around making videos. That’s what I do in my free time.