Inside Balogun Spices: from a paper notebook to a 31% margin in four months.

It's 06:18 on a Tuesday morning, and Tunde Adeyemi is unstacking 25kg bags of suya pepper from the boot of a beaten-up Highlander. Balogun Market is half-awake; a young man is hosing down the kerb in front of the next stall. Adeyemi has run Balogun Spices for fourteen years.

"For the first eleven, I used a notebook," he says, holding up the survivor — a cardboard-bound A4 ledger with the corner chewed off. Inside, every page is a Sunday. Inside every Sunday is a column of figures that, by Tuesday, has stopped meaning anything.

The notebook

Adeyemi's notebook system, like most market notebooks, did two things. It logged sales (sometimes). And it told him, at the end of the month, whether he was up or down (sometimes). What it didn't do was answer the question he actually had:

Which item is making me money, and which one is bleeding me dry?

"You know the feeling," he says. "End of the month, you count the cash and you say — yes, I made some money. But you don't know which item gave you the money. You don't know which item ate it back."

By January 2025, the spice business in Lagos had changed. Adeyemi's biggest cost — pepper from a contact in Jos — had risen 38% over twelve months. His selling prices had risen perhaps 15%. He hadn't noticed.

Switching the spice shop

A neighbour in the next stall — a young woman selling provisions — had been using Enimara for three months. "She kept saying 'See, see, see what this app tell me,'" Adeyemi laughs. "I thought, fine. Let me see."

The first thing he did was hand his phone to his eighteen-year-old daughter Halima and ask her to set it up. Twenty-four minutes. The app asked him a handful of questions (what do you sell, how many places, are you alone or with staff) and then it was ready.

The second thing he did was nothing — for a week.

The first uncomfortable week

"That week, I was just using it like a normal cash register," he says. "I added the products as I sold them. Suya pepper. Curry. Maggi. By Sunday, I had maybe thirty products entered."

The discomfort came on Sunday night. The app showed him a number he hadn't asked for. Average margin: 19%.

"I thought it was wrong. I went back and checked. Then I checked again. Then I sat down."

Nineteen percent. Not awful — many provision shops run lower — but well below where Adeyemi thought he was. "I had told myself for months that I was making 30%, maybe 35%. I had been wrong for months."

When curry stopped lying

The next two weeks were forensic. Adeyemi added every cost he could find: the rent on the stall, the boy who helped him carry, the diesel for the generator the days NEPA was off, the small bribes that, in Balogun, are bookkeeping line items whether you like it or not.

By the end of week three, he had a clean picture of every product. Suya pepper was healthy — 41% margin. Maggi was thin — 11%. Curry powder, which he thought of as a steady reliable, was running at six percent.

"Six percent. After my time. After the boy. After everything. Six." He shakes his head. "I had been selling it for the same price for two years and the supplier had been raising the cost. I didn't know."

The 31% number

Three changes followed, in this order:

1. Curry went up ₦200 per bag. "The customers complained. I told them — the supplier raised it. They paid."
2. Two products got dropped. A locally-blended pepper mix and a discontinued maggi line. Both were under 8% margin and not selling enough volume to defend.
3. The top-selling item — suya pepper — got promoted. "Front of the table. Every customer that comes, they see suya pepper first."

Twelve weeks later, the same dashboard showed a different number. 31%.

The number, Adeyemi insists, isn't really the point. "The point is — I know now. Whatever happens, I know. If the price goes up, I see it the next Sunday. If a product is dying, I see it. I'm not guessing."

What he tells other traders

Three weeks ago Adeyemi started a small WhatsApp group with eleven other traders he's known for years. He calls it "Igbó Owó" — the bush of money. They share weekly screenshots of their margins, the way teenagers used to share school grades.

"Most of them are like I was," he says. "They are doing okay. But they don't know. And they don't know what they don't know."

The advice he gives them is short:

• Start the same week. Don't wait for a quiet month. There won't be one.
• Use it like a notebook for the first week. Just enter sales. Don't try to fix anything.
• Look at margin per item, not total sales. Total sales lies. Margin doesn't.
• If a product is below 15%, ask three questions: can I raise the price, can I cut the cost, should I stop selling it?
• Keep the notebook for two more months. "Just to compare. Then throw it away." Adeyemi laughs, and gestures at the chewed-cornered ledger. "I haven't thrown mine away yet. Maybe in June."

What we learned

We tell merchants Enimara helps them sell, take bookings, and run their P&L. What Adeyemi's story underlines is the quiet one: it tells them what they didn't know they didn't know.

For four months Adeyemi had been selling curry at a six-percent margin, and his evidence for the previous month being "alright" was — vibes. Vibes are a kind of accounting. They're just a bad one.

This is why we're so stubborn about offline. Margin reports are only useful if they exist. They only exist if the sale gets logged. And the sale only gets logged if the POS still works when MTN doesn't.

You can read more merchant stories, see pricing, or message Tunde directly — he says he doesn't mind. (He's @tundespice on WhatsApp. Don't say we sent you.)