I’m moving back to Nigeria to launch my Online Fashion Brand and its Exciting.

The fashion world is a high stakes, exciting & challenging one particularly in Nigeria and so when we got the opportunity to interview a young woman who's in the process of moving to Nigeria to set up an online fashion brand, we jumped at it! 

She moved to the UK over a decade ago to study, and after a very interesting and varied career comprising stints in Graphic Design, Marketing & Public Relations, she's taking the plunge and moving back to Nigeria to carve her own niche in the burgeoning fashion industry. 

In this revealing interview, she discusses her career path so far and what it is like starting up her business from scratch: the logistics, strategy & planning involved and how she's decided this is the time to flip a new page, explore her passion and take the entrepreneurial route in Nigeria.
 

So lets get to it...
 

Q: When did you move to the United Kingdom from Nigeria, and what was the inspiration for the move?
 

A: After my secondary education in Nigeria, I moved to the UK in 2001. I then attended a college in Dublin for my A levels and subsequently moved on to study Multimedia & Computing at the University of Swansea in Wales. I, like many Nigerians had always planned to study abroad, as the high quality education is very appealing but actually moved to the US before I came to the UK, as I was going to study out there and had taken  prerequisite SATs to go to University, but due to personal circumstances I had to move to the UK instead.
 

Q: One would be tempted to say your coming to the UK was fated. So when did you graduate from University and begin your career?
 

A: I graduated in 2006 and began my career in London the same year. As I had studied Multimedia & Computing, I wanted to make sure I utilised the creative side of my degree, so I took a job as a freelance graphics designer at a London agency.  I stayed with the company for a couple of years and then moved on to work as an in house consultant for an online advertising agency working on above-the-line (ATL) campaigns. In marketing, above-the-line campaigns are initiatives designed to attract new customers to a business, so the typical media used here would be TV, Press, Radio, Online, and so on. The flip side of this is below-the-line campaigns designed to advertise to existing customers of a business primarily to cross sell other products. For example if you receive a letter from your bank asking you to open a savings account if you only had a current account with them, then that would be an example of a Direct Mail (DM), marketing campaign which is a common way of executing below-the-line campaigns. I stayed with advertising agency for a couple of years and following this, I made the switch to work in Public Relations at another agency. Advertising, Branding and Marketing are all aspects of PR, so this was a very straight forward move to make. Following my stint in PR, I made yet another move, this time to do Ecommerce in a Luxury UK handbag brand.
 

It certainly seems like you made a few strategic but interesting moves in your career...
 

All these career moves were carefully planned, as I knew I wanted to one day launch my own brand and so these were strategic decisions taken to learn the skills required to launch and promote a brand in future.
 

Q: OK so you’d had a well-rounded career, with some solid and relevant experience. When did you start thinking about moving back to Nigeria and what prompted it?
 

A: I think my case is a bit unique because I was never really interested in moving back to Nigeria. I’ve always thought of the country (particularly Lagos) as being too hectic and a lot of hassle. Things need to be a little better organised out there. However, my decision to move back is more career-driven than anything else. Yes, whilst it would be great to be closer to my family, the key reason I decided to move back is to make the most of my skills and experiences as I will further explain. I have always been very interested in fashion, which probably explains some of the career moves I earlier mentioned. My previous experience was working with a ladies hand bag brand, but I had a bigger interest in ladies clothing, in particular European style designs. The UK market is saturated with European style brands, so when I started looking at the feasibility of setting up my own brand, the majority of my research focussed on the Nigerian market, particularly Lagos, to get a better understanding of what the market is like out there, particularly for European style clothing.The Nigerian woman is sophisticated and stylish when it comes to fashion, and although in Nigeria there is a lot of interest in traditional style attire, the women also love European style clothing. I found there were not many Nigerian designers doing European style clothing, which was quite enlightening. Most designers in Lagos focus on traditional designs, and we still have foreign/ imported European labels dominating the market for Western style clothing in Nigeria.  Following my research it was a no brainer that I would launch my brand in Nigeria, the only question was whether I was going to move back physically to run the business from Lagos, seeing as it is going to be an online/ Ecommerce business. I spoke to a mentor who has worked in Ecommerce in Nigeria, and she underscored the importance of being on the ground in Lagos, even for an online business. Lagos has its challenges from a logistical perspective even for an online business, so I decided that in order to make my new venture a success, I would move back to Nigeria to oversee the setting up of the business.

Q: You have certainly researched all aspects of the move back: Can you just run through what you have done so far in terms of getting things set up?
 

A: Yes I‘ve been very busy indeed. I’ve been working on setting up the website, which should hopefully launch in July. I’ve also just arranged a shipment of fabric to Nigeria which I source from suppliers in China, Turkey & India. Last year I did a trip across Asia, visiting China, Malaysia and Singapore in order to find a supplier, but ironically, the manufacturers I ended up going with I actually found online. In Asia, there was a bit of a language barrier communicating with the suppliers, which was not the case with the online suppliers I found, so it was easier to communicate with them and get a deal done. I’ve also been working on securing office space out in Lagos and have begun searching for talent, as I would need to build a team to work with me on the business.