How education failed to nurture passion

He uses maize cob covers and stems, wood waste, some wild grass and berries, to make decorations on furniture, an art he says university education failed to give him.

At 40, Mr Luutu Henry seems to have finally found comfort for his childhood dream of becoming a creative designer. 

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Having grown up in a village, Henry says he had no opportunity to exploit his passion in art because schools there did not offer anything on it.

He later moved to Kampala with his parents, only to find the same arrangement; he banked on the university instead.

“After completing Senior Six, I joined Makerere University’s Faculty of Arts, but the art which was taught to me was not what I hoped would turn my dream into reality,” he says.

Elaborating, he says art taught at the university failed to relate with what people wanted in Uganda for use on daily basis.

“It was basically painting, writing posters and sculpture, which also was highly theoretical. I had to get out of the lecture rooms and on the streets to work with carpenters who have never seen the door of a classroom,” he says.

There, he was taught how several things were made, he went on to make his own which he took back to the university for finishing, because the final touches at the workshops on the streets were poor.

When he left the university in 1996, he went to teach art at one of the colleges in Kampala and saved money to start his own workshop.

“The practical knowledge I had was not enough to have me employed by anyone and produce something meaningful,” he says.

Teaching for 10 years

He stayed at the college for 10 years, but was able to start his own small workshop after four years.

He then made his first decorated stool using paint and showed it to people as a sample.

“The stool was unique and different from those on the market at the time. Those who saw it started offering me orders on other pieces of furniture, slowly leading to growth of the workshop,” he says.

Then problems came. He could not satisfy orders in time due to poor manual equipment he used and the finishing was not of the quality he wanted.

To solve this problem, Henry bought a woodwork manual with different types of machines and explanations on what they could do.

The book changed his world; he got a loan from his employer with his salary as collateral and bought machines, one after the other, beginning with those which he used most.

Then more work and money started flowing. He would be at the college teaching during the day, and spend part of the night doing finishing on furniture initially worked on by his employees.

“The people I employed only worked on the general parts of the furniture, mine was the designing and finishing because I knew what good finishing meant to customers,” he says.

But when he was not around, the staff at the workshop did not do a god job, they needed constant supervision, thus he decided to quit his teaching job.

Henry opened a showroom with unique types of furniture. These ranged from dining and dressing tables to beds.

But then what he termed as unforeseen costs started eating into his business, rent, and more workers, at the time he was employing 15 and more were needed.

“The more the workshop grew, the more the challenges, then things turned worse, money was not coming in from the workshop, my employees needed their pay and wood got even more expensive,” he says.

Going bankrupt

Henry went bankrupt and his employees deserted him as he closed down the workshop and the showroom.

He never gave up, he had a vision beyond keeping people around him, he thought of specialising in products which were not capital intensive but required creativity.

The former teacher started making painted wall clocks, which did not do well on the market, hence his decision to change.

He would buy a wall clock and fit it on a piece of wood with some decorations.

People rejected them again telling him there was no creativity on his part to warrant what he was asking for. They determined the price instead of Henry.

“For two years, I struggled with this, with customers paying me very little. I decided to put in some research into to find out what I can do to add value to my products, but also give me the command over the price,” he says.

Henry moved from Kampala with his wife to Entebbe. The area being bushy and mostly farmland at the time, he started experimenting with banana, maize leaves and anything he could find around there to decorate pieces of furniture he made.

The results were wonderful when he introduced them to the market. Customers accepted them for their uniqueness and beauty.

He moved on to perfect his art and the rest now is history. 

Henry sells one piece of decorated wall clock at $150 and customers are willing and happy to pay.

“To get here, it required me not to look for money, but satisfaction from doing something for myself. If I were looking for money, I wouldn’t have put in time,” he says.

According to Henry, money would have meant that he does something very fast and sell it. What he wanted was to develop something unique which would eventually mean he controls it and its price.