Founder

Muthomi Tonny

Founder & Owner of Orchid

I’m Muthomi Tonny, a designer from Kariene, a small town in Meru, Kenya, and the founder of Orchid.

For the past six years, I have worked as a designer, but for much longer than that I have wanted to build something of my own. One of my earliest ambitions was simple: I wanted to start a T-shirt business. As a designer, I would often create logos and visual identities with the idea that one day I could turn some of them into a real brand.

The idea that eventually became Orchid, however, came from somewhere I didn't expect.

While working at Bangbet, I was introduced to affiliate marketing when the Chinese team I worked with introduced an affiliate program designed to drive new sign-ups. Seeing how the system connected people, referrals and results gave me an idea.

At first, I wasn't thinking about building an e-commerce platform. I was thinking about my T-shirts.

I wondered whether I could create my own website and use a similar model to help people sell my products. I tried it, and it backfired badly.

But the failure didn't make me abandon the idea. It made me question the way I had built it.

I began thinking that perhaps the idea itself wasn't wrong. Maybe I simply hadn't done it right the first time. So instead of walking away from it, I doubled down.

That small idea of finding a better way to sell T-shirts gradually became a much bigger question: What would a commerce platform built around brands, creators and shoppers look like if it were designed for Africa from the beginning?

That question became Orchid.

Building From Africa

Orchid is my attempt to build a commerce system that is genuinely different and deeply relevant to Africa.

I come from Kariene in Meru. I didn't start this journey from a major global technology hub, and Orchid didn't begin with a huge team or an established e-commerce company behind it. It grew from design, experimentation, failed attempts, observation and the belief that we can build ambitious technology from Africa rather than simply adapting systems created for somewhere else.

My background as a designer continues to influence how I build Orchid. I care about how technology works, but I also care deeply about how it feels to use: how a brand presents itself, how a creator builds an identity, how a shopper discovers something new, and how all of those experiences connect.

Today, I am building Orchid as a platform that brings creators, brands and shoppers into one connected commerce ecosystem.

The original T-shirt business never became what I imagined.

In a strange way, that failure gave me something much bigger to build.

Muthomi Tonny
Founder & Owner, Orchid
Meru, Kenya