In 2016, Ameedah Eniola Olaniyan’s family was going through something difficult. A sick relative was receiving a blood transfusion at home and the whole family was involved in the care. They were cleaning the space. Wiping things down, washing with soap and water, doing what most Nigerian households do when they want a place to be clean.

But they were not disinfecting.

Ameedah’s baby sister fell seriously ill from an infection picked up during that period and had to be admitted to the hospital. The doctor sat them down and explained the difference between cleaning and disinfecting. Between removing dirt and actually killing the germs that make people sick.

She went home and started researching. Then she started mixing. Not in a factory or a lab but in a room, with buckets, figuring things out as she went. That was where Sparklean Station Nigeria Limited began. A disinfectant cleaning products company born not from a business plan or a market gap analysis but from a moment in a hospital room where a doctor explained why her sister got sick.

Nine years later, Sparklean Station owns a factory space in Ilorin and is exporting products to Niamey in Niger Republic, including white label manufacturing for an international reseller. The distance between a bucket in a room and a factory with export capacity is not a small one. And Ameedah covered every inch of it.

The journey has not been clean, which is almost funny given what the business does. The challenges Ameedah has faced would have stopped a lot of people. NAFDAC regulatory hurdles that took time and money and patience to navigate. Staff who replicated her product labels and sold fake versions to her customers in the market. Cash flow problems. Staff incompetence. And then the moments that are harder to laugh off even now.

There was the time a product exploded during production because the space was too small to handle what they were making. There was the new staff member who mixed bleach with tiles cleaner and could not breathe until she was resuscitated. These are not stories from a management case study. They are real things that happened to real people in Ameedah’s business, and she dealt with all of them.

And then there was the trademark situation.

In 2023, Ameedah went through the process of trademarking the business. When the approval came through, she discovered that the name that had been approved already belonged to an existing business in the same industry. She had to start again. New trademark application, new fees, new process. And in the course of trying to find a name that would stick and clear the necessary checks, she changed the business name ten times.

TEN times.

Most people would have given up after three.

“We have faced our fears head on and we are still navigating the journey,” she says, and the way she says it makes it clear she means both parts equally. The facing and the navigating. Neither is finished.

What this journey has given Ameedah, beyond the factory and the export deal and the Tony Elumelu Foundation grant, is a version of herself she trusts completely.

“I’ve learned resilience and perseverance and I have 100 percent belief in myself,” she says. “Sooner everything will make sense.”

Her advice to anyone building a business in Nigeria is simple and hard earned.

“Know your purpose and keep your head up high, bearing in mind that success is not always on a straight line.”

Not a straight line. That is an understatement for what Ameedah has walked. But she is still walking it.

In the next three to five years she wants Sparklean Station products on shelves in markets and supermarkets across all 36 states in Nigeria and she is already looking at extending the brand’s export reach across Africa. The foundation is there. The factory is there. The belief is very much there.

On the days when it gets hard, she does not look forward at how far there is still to go. She looks back at how far she has already come.

“I have not reached my peak,” she says. “So I can’t stop.”

Shop Sparklean Station Nigeria Limited and follow the journey on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok @sparkleanstation. You can also reach Ameedah directly on WhatsApp at 08122061440.