Businesses face challenge of keeping customers

BUILDING a customer base and keeping those customers is a challenge for a local prawn business in Central.
Felicity Tomasai from the Hisiu Prawn Sales said other people from their village could also use the name to start their own businesses.
“We are just using the village name so other people in the village who fish for prawns can do the same for their own benefit,” she said.
“The challenge is to get our customers and to make sure we keep those customers.” Tomasai said the prawns business had always been in their family but they had recently tapped into using the social media platform to expand their customer base.
“In the past, our families just brought in prawns to the market and sold them,” she said.
“This year, we decided to take this legacy on and reach out to customers using social media.
“Building our customer base was a very big challenge in the beginning; but now that we have built our customer base, we have to ensure that there is consistent supply to meet the customer demand.”
Tomasai said they made their market research and found that there was a good demand for prawns in the city.
“We made our research and found out that there is a good demand in prawns so we decided to give it a go.”
Tomasai said they had recently received orders from some hotels, restaurants, construction companies and catering companies.