How Roving Heights is Building a Literary Empire Against All Odds

In an exclusive Techstoriex interview, Adedotun Eyinade, co-founder of RovingHeights Nigeria, discussed the journey of building one of Nigeria’s most dynamic book retail chains, the balance between technology and physical spaces, and the enduring power of trust in business.

Femi Morgan: Let’s start with your business model. As the founder of Roving Heights, how did this journey begin, and what prompted the move into digital platforms and a website?

Adedotun Eyinade: We started out as a distribution company. I came into bookselling by accident, realizing there was a significant gap in the value chain, especially in getting books to the final consumer. About 14 or 15 years ago, there was a real need. Many self-published authors and even larger publishers were looking for reliable partners to get their books into stores, provide reports, and remit sales. We began working with bookstores, mostly in the South-West—Lagos, Ibadan, university campuses.

I had a demanding day job in management consulting at the time. The first iteration had its challenges; bookstores sometimes had issues, and getting money back was difficult. I was very busy, so I had to step back for a bit. The second iteration began when my younger sister and co-founder started experimenting with social media around 2015-2016. There was a huge reception from readers on Instagram and Twitter. She used direct messages to sell books, and the response was interesting.

I was out of the country then, traveling in East Africa and the US. I was exposed to different book retail markets—how beautifully designed stores were, how they created community spaces and events. That gave me an idea of what was possible. On returning to Nigeria in 2017, my co-founders and I decided to move beyond Instagram and open our first physical store in 2018.

Femi Morgan: You now have stores in Surulere, Abuja, and others. You’re expanding rapidly. What has been the driving force? As both a culture curator and a business, are you making money?

Adedotun Eyinade: We’re still in a growth phase. Consider Nigeria’s potential: a country of over 200 million people with a literacy rate of about 60-70%. But there’s a temptation to oversize our market. South Africa, with around 60 million people, supports several bookstore chains. The size of the middle class there is more defined.

In Nigeria, if you’re lucky to be born in certain parts, you have access to books. In many others, there are no public libraries or bookstores. Our mission is to ensure Roving Heights is present where there is a market—be it physical outlets in state capitals or major towns. We envision Nigeria supporting 20-plus bookstores in key cities where there’s a middle class that can afford to buy books. Our vision is modest; we’re thinking perhaps 15-20 strategic outlets, not hundreds. We want to increase our footprint in Lagos, Abuja, Kano… places with serious, untapped markets.

Femi Morgan: With your website delivering books nationwide, how relevant are brick-and-mortar stores for Roving Heights?

Adedotun Eyinade: Bookselling is a personal thing. It should involve a conversation between the bookseller and the buyer, a relationship. A bookseller is like a therapist of sorts. Someone comes in looking for a read, and based on their interests or history, you can recommend titles. That shouldn’t be left entirely to an algorithm.

Having a website is great—it enables reach. But physical stores provide an opportunity to do more than just sell. They are spaces for events, for browsing, for discovering a “to-be-read” list. You can sit down for a cup of tea, like we offer in our Abuja store. It could even be a spot for a life commitment, like a proposal, in a space devoted to literary matters. Physical stores are a crucial part of our vision for community.

Femi Morgan: You initially used technology—social media—to boost sales. Have the numbers increased significantly with your robust website and online presence?

Adedotun Eyinade: Absolutely. A huge part of what we do still depends on tech platforms. For instance, we’re building a platform for our self-published authors to see their sales data in real-time, with API integration to our inventory. They can see how many copies sold, where sales are coming from—Lagos, Abuja—and match that to their marketing campaigns. That’s the power of tech. We process thousands of orders monthly on the back of technology.

We believe in an omnichannel model—a mix of online and physical. But our dependence on technology is fundamental. Future evolutions include our own platform for audiobooks and other digital products.

Femi Morgan: Logistics is a major challenge for Nigerian businesses. How have you managed to build trust through reliable delivery? I recall a notable buyer praising how quickly he received his order.

Adedotun Eyinade: I’ll be candid; I wouldn’t say we’ve cracked it. I still get customer complaints. My mission is to make books available at the best price point, but I am not a logistics company. I depend on third-party firms. We have partnerships with DHL, CourierPlus, and others. I’d say they get it right about 70% of the time, especially to remote areas.

We keep learning. We now offer customers multiple delivery options—DHL is more expensive but has higher success rates, other services are cheaper. In some cases, we help customers use bus parks. Logistics remains a major challenge. The delivery cost can sometimes rival the price of the book itself. The ideal would be a reliable, affordable national postal service. We hold ourselves accountable when we drop the ball and constantly look for better solutions, aspiring to the excellence of a company like Amazon, even at our scale.

Femi Morgan: Is Roving Heights family-owned, or do you have external investors?

Adedotun Eyinade: Not yet. It’s owned by three of us—myself, my sister, and my wife. We’ve bootstrapped the business, reinvesting whatever little profit we make. We run a very lean operation to maximize what we have.

Femi Morgan: Do you use technology for customer profiling and personalized marketing?

Adedotun Eyinade: Absolutely. We have apps that help us minimize cart abandonment rates. If you shop on our site but don’t check out, we have systems to trigger follow-up emails. We have a small digital marketing team constantly looking for cutting-edge tools to improve online selling. We haven’t fully optimized our website’s potential yet; we believe it can become a much larger revenue platform. We’re open to new ideas—we’ve even sold books on platforms like Chowdeck and Jumia, which I think makes us the first bookstore to do that.

Femi Morgan: How do you navigate the risks of online payment fraud?

Adedotun Eyinade: We are lucky to be serving readers. There’s a certain level of sophistication and trust. Competing for a share of wallet in Nigeria is tough, with many pressing needs. Books are a niche. Our payment risk is somewhat limited. We’ve had a few instances—like someone using a foreign card to fraudulently buy large quantities. We caught on, stopped delivery, and the transaction was reversed. Overall, the risk is lower than if we were selling high-volume, high-fraud items like groceries. It comes with being in a niche market.

Femi Morgan: What kind of strategic tech partnerships are you looking for now?

Adedotun Eyinade: We are very discerning. As much as we are open to new partners, we need to be sure they share our values and have sustainability. We want partners who will be there in three to five years, providing support. We’ve seen flashy platforms that fizzle out. We look for partners with a clear roadmap, be it in CRM, payments, or logistics. If someone has a better, more cost-effective logistics solution than our current partners, I’m open. I’m a numbers person; I think about what reduces cost while maintaining service. We’re looking for anything that makes our work easier and more efficient.

Femi Morgan: Given innovations like audiobooks and AI, what is the future of the physical book?

Adedotun Eyinade: This is a very important question. It’s not futuristic; it’s pressing. New technologies always seem to threaten the book. Twenty years ago, it was the advent of e-readers like the Kindle. People proclaimed the death of the physical book, but it survived and continues to outsell digital formats in many areas.

AI will progressively influence publishing—perhaps in predicting trends, inventory management, or personalized recommendations via LLMs. But I believe humans will still prefer contact with fellow humans. An AI can suggest a solution, but people often want to talk to a human who understands emotion and context. That’s my perception. The physical book’s triumph will last for the foreseeable future, even as AI brings positive tools to the trade.

Femi Morgan: What is Roving Heights’ competitive advantage over other platforms like Amazon, traditional bookstores, or publishers selling directly?

Adedotun Eyinade: It’s difficult to answer without sounding immodest. I’d say we are very nimble. We respond quickly to what customers ask for. We ensure we have books in stock when there’s demand. We devote a lot of attention to understanding our market—what readers want to read. Buying the right inventory is the heart of this business.

We are also in a constant quest to be better. Every time we plan a new store, we ask what we learned from the last one. When a customer complains, we hold ourselves accountable. We are constantly learning—from traveling, from observing respected bookstores globally and locally. We invest in our staff, encouraging them to learn from others. Innovation often starts with imitation, building on what others have achieved. We are mindful that our success is thanks to the goodwill of the reading public, and we must never take advantage of that trust.

Femi Morgan: Looking ahead, where do you see Roving Heights in the next five years?

Adedotun Eyinade: We hope and pray to continue growing, expanding, and getting better. If we did X this year, we want to do more next year. Being better means serving our customers better. That is paramount. We want to get better at making customers happy.

A key point is trust. Most people pay online before delivery. They send money from Kaduna or Kano, trusting we will deliver from Abuja or Lagos. That implicit trust is everything. We aim to continue building a reputation based on that trust—that if you buy from us, you will get your original book.

We hope to pilot new experiences for customers, ensure we meet all obligations to our staff—fair wages, pensions, a joyful workplace. We also want to support our community—public libraries, the local literary scene. If we become a 40- or 50-store chain, it means we can support more publishers and self-published authors get their work and earnings out. Building a credible ecosystem for books is the dream. Every day I wake up thinking about what it takes to get there—the mindset, strategy, discipline, and people. I hope we realize it.