Shade Kolade Ogunpitan loves what she does for a living. She is an Events Planner and organiser. She is also an Events Manager. And she is good at what she does. She runs Pholard Events, one of the leading events companies in Nigeria.
A few days ago she spoke to CityPeople Publisher Seye Kehinde about her success story. It is very inspiring. Below are excerpts of her interview.
Tell us about Shade the CEO of Pholard Events.
I am Shade Kolade Ogunpitan. A mum, a wife, an event entrepreneur, a decorator and I am an event business coach. Wow, it’s really all-encompassing.
What services do you offer?
We started out as an event planning company and over the years as we grew as a company, we started diversification and started drilling down the value chain of events. We started event rentals, we do rentals of some items and as we grew as a company we also moved into training. We now have a training school that is Pholard Events Academy. This is another aspect of our business where we train people to become Event Planners because we’ve looked at the economy that we are in and also seen the level of unemployment in the country so we started encouraging people to be creative, there are so many things you can do in the event space and do it well and become an expert in it. We ran Pholard Events Academy stream 1 and now we’re putting together another batch that would be coming for the academy training though we have loads of enquiries right now. We also do decorations, I’m sure you loved the decoration of the Late Comrade Yinka Odumakin funeral. It was also handled by the decoration team at Pholard Events. So it’s been diversification all the way because we understand that the business that we do has its own value chain that we needed to mine. So basically these are the services that we presently render at Pholard Events.
How have you found the Event Business?
That’s such a brilliant question and a very interesting one, trust me. It’s been a very very interesting journey. A journey that I have learnt consistently as I have progressed in my business in the last 9 years, it’s been a learning phase. We’ve handled loads and loads of events that I’ve even lost count of so many of it. We’ve handled events for several families, several cooperate organizations, we’ve handled different types of events but I’ll just pick about a few. We’ve handled events for the family of Sir Kensington Adebukola Adebutu the Odole Oodua, not just one event for that family but several events. We’ve worked with the family of Late Dr. Fredrick Fasehun, his funeral was a one-week package, a very loaded one, we had Events back to back from Lagos to Ondo. We had team members consummating the Lagos Events and team members consummating the Ondo events as well.
We’ve also worked with the family of Dr Wole Olanipekun, the senior advocate of Nigeria. The Folorunshos. Mrs Veronica Folorunsho and her husband, we were the official event planner to the SIMS Movie Premier. Before I forget, we also handled an event for Otunba Peter Obafemi which you were also a part of. City people were on ground to also cover the event.
We also had an event just recently, Late Comrade Yinka Odumakin, an event that came with it’s own experience. We had to do it from Lagos down to Osun State in the town of Moro. It was a very detailed one, I mean you all saw it. A very colorful event which started from Police College in Lagos and then we had the candle night Procession, then the the final event on Saturday which was just last week but trust me, putting all of this events together is not a three day thing, it’s something we’ve been working on.
I’ll love to use this opportunity to thank the entire planning committee and then thank especially the wife of the deceased Dr Joe Okei Odumakin for totally trusting our brand Pholard Events to handle the funeral. We thank her. There are loads and loads of events that if we continue, trust me we won’t end.
Why and what year did you go into Event Business?
I started my event career over 10 years ago as a staff at Elizabeth R. Then I worked with the Late Mrs. Ibidunni Ituah Ighodalo at Elizabeth R Events. Along the line, while we were working with Elizabeth R Event Company, we were students at Lagos State University then, so it was just trying to strike a balance between schooling and working with Elizabeth R. So having worked those days, myself and a couple of my friends, Kehinde of Finess Events, Bisi Sotunde of Busy Bee Events, Bisoye of Ball Events and Motunrayo of Tea Makes Events, we were all working with Elizabeth R then, I mean there was no Pholard Events then and my friends didn’t also have their companies name so we were basically working with Elizabeth R.
So few years after I worked in Elizabeth R, about 3 years, I had to proceed to Zapphire Events. Then their office was at Obalende, the company was upstairs. It was a three storey building and I proceeded to Zapphire Events. Started working as an hostess and then I proceeded to become an Event Coordinator over the years. So I worked with 2 established event companies then. I mean I started growing my likeness for event business, started having a flare for the event business. I started loving what it is and then we were making money.
I remember there was a daymy self and Kenny were coming from an event, we just discussed basically about having our own businesses and then I had my fears because, after school while I was working with these two organizations I was also working in the bank, Oceanic Bank. So it was for me, balancing being a bank staff and also working with these two event organizations. So my friend wanted to go to law school then but for me I continued working in the bank for awhile and while working, I was still with my boss in Zapphire Events. So after awhile, one thing led to the other and then we had to birth Pholard Events and that was the beginning of our journey in Pholard Events. I got married while working in zapphire, I had a child and my child is actually over nine years now. She’s nine years and few months now. When she was about a year old, we started the business Pholard Events. So as we speak now, the company is about eight years old now and it’s been grace, grace, grace all the way.
So we can be reached on 08028320765 Our mail is pholardevents@yahoo.com
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