Time was when Vono served as a synonym for foams, mattresses, pillows and even bed, much the same way Maggi currently serves as a second name for every food seasoning among housewives. Ndidi Apam, 60, a grandmother and a retired teacher, is still fixated in that era. She caused a stir recently at her daughter's home when she complained that her grand children do not obey her. Her reason: she instructed the eldest daughter to “carry the Vono out to the sun” and she didn't do it. She eventually did it herself. Later in the day when she told the second daughter to “carry the Vono in”, she didn't do it. It took a lot of explanation for her to realize that her grand children didn't deliberately disobey her. They simply did not connect with what she meant by “Vono”.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Vono was the leading name in foam and general bedding products. The beds and mattresses in most hostels across boarding schools in Nigeria were Vono products. Hospitals and hotels had their fair share of Vono products. In fact, Vono did not just control the market, it had the market. But that was until the 1980s.
Explaining how the company lost its grip on the market, the Managing Director of the rejuvenated Vono Products Plc, Olaitan Odukoya, said the economic down-turn in the country was the primary culprit. “Like every other thing in Nigeria , in the 1980s the fortune of the company took a nosedive and our factories were closed, our dealers were lost, there was lack of funds. Because the middle class was disappearing in the country then, this partly contributed to the company's misfortune, as the middle class was its area of market strength,” he said. The dwindling market led to low funding which was in turn compounded by the divestment of Unilever from the company in 1994. Vono went down and its products disappeared from the market altogether.
Like a phoenix, it has staged a come back. It has successfully recapitalized. It has invested about N150 million in acquiring the latest technology in foam making. Its products are trickling into the market. Vono has also started opening up bedding centres across the country where customers are “allowed to lie on the mattress for about 15 minutes, trying different positions, lying on your tummy, back and side, to get the needed effect” to enable them make the right choice.
But Vono is not alone in the resurrection game. A number of other brands that disappeared from the market are staging a come back. Products like the premier malt drink, Maltex; Macleans and Daily Need toothpastes as well as the once beverage giant, Ovaltine. They are fast taking their place on shelves in major shops and supermarkets where they trigger off memories of old times in those old enough to remember when they held sway as household names and brands to beat.
DIL/Maltex Nigeria Plc, makers of Maltex, are playing up that sentiment in their adverts and sales promotions to reposition the foremost non-alcoholic malt drink. They have managed to sustain this through the use of “the original malt drink” as the pay-off line in almost all their adverts. The old easily connect to it with a nod of acquiescence that it was indeed the first and only malt drink in the market long before others like Nigeria Breweries' Maltina, Vitamalt , Malta Guinness and other new malt drinks were introduced into the market. It was to the malt drink segment what Guinness stout is to that segment of the market. But like Vono, it disappeared from the market in the early 1980s.