A white European man has surprised many following his decision to quit his well-paying Dubai job to sell second-hand clothes in Nairobi.
In an interview with The Standard, Benjamin Gell said that as a man who loves business he was shocked during his first visit to Nairobi to learn that one of the city's first growing businesses is second-hand clothes business.
He has now settled to selling second-hand clothes in Gikomba after his 2017 visit to the country with the highest Gross Domestic Product in East Africa.
"While visiting Nairobi for the first time in March 2017 and driving through the city, I was stunned by the proliferation of second hand clothes along the streets," he said during the interview.
After the visit, he decided to quit his job in Dubai in September 2017 and settled in Nairobi for the business.
"I have three shops in Nairobi's Gikoba market, with most of my containers offloaded in Donholm," he said.
He said he sources his second hand clothes in the United Kingdom.
"The stocks come via ship to Mombasa and then via the SGR to Nairobi," he added.
"When I started out, I wold initially import clothes from several sorting plants, but then I discovered that to ensure we have consistent quality, we had to sort the clothes ourselves."
He said he is in the process of opening his own cloth factory in Romania and the export market will be Kenya.