Corded electric irons for households, tailoring shops and laundry businesses. Dry or steam, 1000W up to 2200W, soleplate and body weight to your choice, from 50 pieces.
Description
Walk into a tailoring shop off Dugbe around four in the afternoon and you'll find an iron parked on a folded wrapper, still hot, waiting for the next pair of trousers. That's the thing in the photograph. Corded, shaped soleplate, rotary dial on the heel, no cleverness anywhere in it. It also happens to be one of the steadiest movers in the country. Tailors destroy irons. Laundries destroy them faster, hostels lose them, and every household replaces one sooner or later.
Treat the picture as a sample of the category rather than the only thing on offer. It shows one shell, one wattage, one soleplate. Your order gets shaped around your customers: dry or steam, ceramic or non-stick or stainless or teflon-coated, 1000W, 1200W, 1600W, 1800W or 2200W, a light domestic body or the heavier one tailors keep asking for, cord from 1.5m to 3m.
If you want my honest view, stock dry irons heavy and steam irons light. Steam needs water that's reasonably clean. A lot of what comes out of a borehole in Ibadan or a tanker in Onitsha carries enough sediment to close up the steam holes inside a few months, and the customer blames you rather than the water. Tailors want mass as well, because on heavy fabric the weight does most of the pressing, and steam models tend to be built light on purpose. Estates, hotels and middle-income homes are a different story. Steam sells well there and people pay more for it.
Two parts decide whether an iron survives its first year. The thermostat and the element. Cheap bimetallic thermostats drift, then they overheat, then somebody's lace gets scorched and that customer never comes back to your shop. We had a batch some time ago where the carton said 1800W and the element inside behaved like something nearer 1200. Slow to heat, slower to recover between passes. The buyer noticed in under a week, which was fair enough of him. Heat-up time on the samples now gets checked before we approve anything.
Auto shut-off after a few idle minutes is the other thing worth arguing about with a factory. Low-cost units leave it out because it costs money. Specify it and we'll price it in, and for anything heading into a hotel or a boarding school, please do specify it. Units can go out in plain neutral cartons, or with your name, logo and colours across the body, the box and the insert card.
Check your power supply before you chase wattage
Wattage buys speed, not heat. Higher wattage means the iron reaches temperature quicker and recovers quicker between passes. The peak heat barely shifts. Ironing quality comes down to the thermostat and the finish on the soleplate, so that's where your money should go.
Stock for what your customers are running on. A 2200W iron will flatten a small inverter, and in most Nigerian homes it's the heaviest single appliance after the kettle. For customers on inverters or on a generator most evenings, 1000W to 1200W dry is the sensible stock.
One thing we won't source. Irons carrying another company's trademark, so please don't ask.
Specification
Below is the build shown in the photograph, line by line. Any of it can move. Tell us what your buyers want and we'll requote against that.
| Product type | Corded electric clothes iron, dry or steam |
|---|---|
| Power options | 1000W, 1200W, 1600W, 1800W or 2200W |
| Voltage | 220-240V 50Hz, matched to Nigerian mains |
| Soleplate | Ceramic, non-stick coated, stainless steel or teflon |
| Temperature control | Rotary thermostat with fabric markings; adjustable range |
| Steam functions | Variable steam, burst of steam, spray and vertical steam on steam models |
| Water tank | 200ml to 350ml on steam models; anti-drip and self-clean available |
| Safety | Thermal fuse standard; auto shut-off after idle time available on request |
| Cord | 1.5m to 3m, 360-degree swivel option, UK three-pin (BS 1363) plug |
| Weight class | Light domestic body or heavier tailoring body |
| Branding | Your logo on the body, box and insert card; colour matched |
| Packaging | Printed colour box, plain carton or bulk carton |
We do not publish prices, because the landed figure depends on the specification, the Customs valuation and the exchange rate on the day you pay.
Minimum order
Fifty pieces, counted across the entire order rather than per model. So 25 dry irons at 1200W for the market and tailoring trade, 15 steam units at 1800W for your walk-in customers, and 10 heavy bodies for a laundry contract still adds up to one qualifying order. Custom printing pushes that figure up. Your logo moulded or printed on the body and your own retail box usually needs 100 per design, since the factory has a minimum run on the print plate and won't break it. Neutral packaging stays at fifty.
Lead time. Plain-packaged stock builds run roughly 12 to 18 days to Lagos by sea consolidation. Air freight cuts that to 6 to 9 days and costs what air freight costs. Add another 7 to 12 days on top if you're branding the body or printing your own boxes, which covers artwork, your approval on the sample and the print run itself. Clearing at Apapa or Tin Can is separate, and the truck out of the port through Lagos traffic is its own adventure.
What decides the right one
People write in asking for our price list. There isn't one, and understanding why will save you time. Venocipal buys to order. The iron above is on this page because a customer wanted decent dry irons, we went and found the workshops that build them properly instead of the ones that assemble them badly, and the result seemed worth putting up so the next buyer has something concrete to point at.
Point at something else and we do the same work again. A heavier tailoring iron. A garment steamer for a boutique on Awolowo Road. An industrial press for a laundry business. Something with no relationship to ironing whatsoever. Photograph it, screenshot it from any marketplace you like, or just describe it in a message. We work out who actually manufactures it rather than who resells it, check the real specification against whatever the listing claims, price it landed in Nigeria with duty and clearing folded in, and get it on a vessel.
Fifty is the floor because underneath that number a factory stops treating a mixed order as worth its attention, and your share of the freight starts looking foolish at groupage rates. It climbs toward a hundred only when your own name goes on the product. Wattage, soleplate, colour, carton, all of that stays your call.
Common questions
Should I put my money into dry or steam?
Dry for tailors, market traders and anywhere the water is hard. Steam for estates, hotels and homes with money to spend. Plenty of buyers split their 50 across both and see which one clears first.
Will these run on an inverter?
1000W to 1200W will, on a properly sized system. Anything from 1800W up generally won't. Describe the customer and we'll point you at the right wattage.
Can one order contain several wattages, soleplates and colours?
Yes. We count the whole shipment towards the minimum, so how you divide it internally is up to you.
Which plug do they ship with?
UK three-pin, BS 1363, wired for 220-240V 50Hz. Ask if you want something else and we'll check whether the factory does it.
Is auto shut-off available?
Yes, though it's an option rather than a fitting you get by default at the cheap end. Put it in your brief and it goes into the quote.
How long do samples take?
Usually a week to ten days by air once the specification is agreed. Sample cost comes off the main order in most cases.
I'm after something else, not an iron at all
Then show it to us. A picture, a link, a description typed into WhatsApp. Locating whatever you point at is the actual business here, and this page is just one example of it.
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Send us your spec and we'll price it
Tell us dry or steam, the wattage, the soleplate you want and how you need it packed, and you'll get a landed Nigerian price rather than an FOB figure that hides the real cost. If it's an entirely different product sitting in your head, send the photo or the link instead. We'll go and find it.
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