OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK- Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Cynthia Bacheet (LinkedIn), co-founder and head designer of Noog.

My name is Cynthia Bacheet and I’m the co-founder and head of design at Noog Furniture. Our brand creates contemporary furniture pieces that are 100% locally produced and crafted and areinspired by Upper Egypt and its culture.

I studied architecture at the Universität der Künste Berlin in Germany. But by the time I graduated, it was already mid-covid. So when I came back to Egypt, I struggled to find a job as conditions were unstable in the nation and worldwide. I decided to start working with my mother — who is also an interior designer — at her architecture company Josephine Shahid Design. There, I worked on designing, interior designing, and on-site to execute all of the designs. What I realized is that a large part of the interior design process was designing the actual furniture pieces and creating them, as well.

…which was when I started noticing a gap in the local Egyptian furniture market.This coincided with rising prices in Egypt making things less affordable. My mom and I then decided to start forming a furniture brand called Noog — which means home in the Nubian language — as a separate entity. This allowed me to take a step back from my mother’s firm and focus more on the company I had co-founded.

I had to give up stabilitywhen I started my own business: Becoming my own boss meant taking responsibility for every choice I made, which was a huge step for me. I didn’t have any corporate experience — I had to make decisions and follow them through to make things happen. This could be perceived as a blessing or a curse because once you’re actually in charge of making decisions and executing them, you become the leading force of that company. So its achievements and failures relied solely on me and my team.

Making a call and committing to it is the really difficult part of this role. It takes a lot of accountability and dedication to reach the targets you’ve set for that company. But the blessing comes when you see your vision and dream become a reality.

Ever since I was a child I was inspired by Egyptian culture and the Nubian heritage, which led me to take elements from each of them and put them into Noog.

I turn to my mother for advice. She’s been working in the interior and manufacturing field and everything that concerns architectural design for over 25 years. She has the expertise that keeps us going. Every time I struggle with anything or need advice concerning clients, or our industry, I turn to her and she’s very happy to help us and help the business grow.

Nowadays, being a founder of a startup is not a lonely journey. I feel that there are so many hands that are reaching out to you that you can grab and ask for help. I am fortunate to be surrounded by a very entrepreneurial family, affording me several people to ask for advice. But I feel that in our field there are communities that help out, as there are in many other fields.

In the beginning, we didn’t want to invest heavily in Noog — we wanted to start small. What we did was we started manufacturing a few products and showcased them in a small showroom. One thing led to another and we started to progress and grow. Now we have a shop in El Gouna and a showroom in New Cairo. Noog grew naturally, rather than us having to invest too much into it. We took it day by day, worked, designed, and let Noog evolve organically. Eventually, we entered Le Marche for the first time, which was a big step for us as a small company in the field. We were not anticipating the growth and were grateful as Noog spontaneously developed.

We believe that the locally produced items in Egypt have a lot of potentialbecause of the quality of craftsmanship and materials that we have here. So if we’re talking about long-term goals we’re dreaming of a day where we can export our products to markets outside of Egypt and be able to showcase our items all over the world.

Ever since I started Noog, it’s been really difficult to catch up with my friends and spend quality time with them because of all the work and tasks that have to be done. Any chance I get and every available minute that I have, I usually spend it with them. I also really enjoy traveling.

If I hadn’t built Noog and if this wasn’t my career, I would probably be doing something very similarin the same industry because this is what I’m passionate about and what I genuinely enjoy doing. Visualizing something or having it designed and then seeing it come to life is truly inspiring and an activity that I would be doing, regardless of having started this business or not.

When it comes to the Egyptian startup scene, the biggest strength is that we have a huge pool of talent. We have a large number of Egyptians who are very well-educated, well-traveled, and who have gained so much experience. They are now coming back to Egypt to live here and are willing to share this experience with their peers. The biggest challenge for startups now would be the economic situation that we are in as a nation since the fluctuating prices of raw materials that we have to import from abroad have caused our prices to fluctuate, too.

One thing I’d like us to change about the local startup sceneis how much we focus on and celebrate very tech-based startups. There are innovative and disruptive solutions to traditional businesses through other creative ways that are also scalable and are worthy of their moment in the sun.

My advice to future entrepreneurs would probably be to learn from everyone’s story, but not to compare yourself to them: Each business is unique and each journey is different. We have to learn from each other but we should never be comparing ourselves to other people and to how fast they grow.

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