15 minute read
Dapo Osaji Found Success
How Ace Nigerian Fashion Designer Dapo Osaji Found Success
Veteran Nigerian fashion designer and founder of Effeci, Oladapo Osaji is an interviewer’s favourite – welcoming, chatty, and eager to impart knowledge to the next generation. About 20 minutes before the Business Elites editor commenced this interview, held at his minimalistic showroom in Lagos, he had given us more than a sneak peek of his intriguing entrepreneurial journey, laced with invaluable lessons for African fashion designers and the ones coming after them. What inspired you to become a fashion designer?
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I think it came from my love for clothes. I had a very fashionable father who, back in the day, would look very sharp in a shortsleeved shirt, a tie, and a nice pair of trousers every weekday. Then, on the weekend, he would don the most beautiful Agbada (a flowing native attire, traditionally worn by Nigerians and known as Babariga in Northern Nigeria). I think that forged my first idea of what a stylish man looks like, and that began to draw my thirst deeper and deeper into the world of fashion. tailor back then. So once the men couldn’t afford this big tailor, they would rush to my uncle, get the same tailoring quality and pay less. If you bring the scenario to the modern day, it’s like me copying the works of Gucci. My uncle was good by his own rights, but he didn’t have a lot of finesse that other fashion labels had. So rather than go to the big brands and pay a lot of money, these guys would come to him and bring more garments. They would bring about 10 to 15 Babariga garments at once. I saw all this happen, and the experience made me very in tune with men’s garments.
As you told us off-record, you were very popular in Unilag, and everybody wanted you to sew for them. Did you know you would pursue the fashion business after your studies?
I knew that was what I was going to do. I had already made up my mind because it brought me a lot of money. There was no way for me to think otherwise than keep pursuing it as a career. I stayed focused and started to make clothes for students, and when many of these customers graduated and began to work in different industries, they still came back to me for their suits. For the ones who wanted to get married, I made their wedding suits. So it was easier to just get into the business after school.
Let’s talk about the business of fashion. Many fashion designers pay more attention to the glamour and frontend side of things. How do you run a successful fashion business in a country like Nigeria?
Dapo’s passion for the fashion business runs deep. It hurts him to see many young fashion designers stepping into the industry with no sense of direction, sound knowledge of the commerce end of fashion, and a nearzero appetite to seek the proper guidance. I remember sitting in my uncle’s store every day and watching the likes of Mike Akhigbe (Nigeria’s former Chief of Naval Staff) and a host of military men come to the store to get their Babariga made by my uncle, who was a renowned tailor at the time. He was a perfect substitute for a particular top-shot You just touched a part of me that I have always expressed concerns about for the longest time, but nobody was listening. Truth be told, there are a lot of fashion designers in Nigeria who are very intuned with glamour; they understand design, draping, and everything. However, they
are not bankable. It’s one thing to know design, it’s another thing to understand the commerce part of it, and it takes a lot for you to know this part.
For instance, we have a community of about 250 young designers who call themselves designers, but they are not making much money or doing a lot of business for them to be bankable. So we sat at a forum, and I asked them, how many of you have made ten thousand garments this year? This was from January to October, but no hand went up. I brought it down to five thousand, no hand up, I brought it down to one thousand, no hand up. The first set of people who raised their hands made around fifty garments. It was very painful for me, so much that I cried.
So many of them were heading in the same direction without a sense of purpose. I told them that, sadly, we cannot all be fashion designers. Not all of us can be fashion designers. Some of us need to be the photographers cataloguing all the collections, and some need to take care of the merchandising and setting up stores. Some of us need to be the ones keeping the fashion history of Nigeria.
Look at Fela, for instance. He was a very fashionable man, but there is no record of who his tailor was. Have you thought about that? Who is keeping that history? Chief Obafemi Awolowo was one of the first to wear wool as Agbada; how did that fad start? The Ijebus pride themselves on being fashionable when it comes to traditional fashion; how did that start? Chief Obafemi Awolowo used to wear a particular cap style; what was the origin? How did it start? How did it go round? How did it transcend time? Nobody is keeping this fashion history.
When I was in New York, I went to the fashion museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and I saw clothes made in the 1700s up to the present day. What that means is somebody was actually keeping the fashion history. Why is that not happening in Nigeria? Again, something else I learnt in my sojourn is that the least paid in the fashion value chain is the fashion designer. The fashion editor is the most paid; the person writing about every fashion designer earns more than the designer. So why is everybody running to be a fashion designer? That’s the big question I always ask everybody in this industry.
But what if I’m drawn to it or I just desire to become a fashion designer? Is there anything wrong with that?
The problem is, for the longest time, we did not understand that you can move along the value chain. We were told that cut and sew is fashion designing, so we went to fashion school, and they imbibed in us the one-way street method - cut and sew. Nobody ever told us that you could actually earn from other areas in the value chain. So it became a big problem, and we were just fashionably broke, to say the least.
What business model would you prescribe for a struggling fashion designer?
What I will recommend, first of all, is a diagnosis of your person. I sat with my mentor, and he asked me, ‘what is your business?’ With my shoulder squared and deepened voice, I answered, ‘I’m in the business of fashion designing.’ He said no, you are wrong. You are in the business of making people look good. Once I heard that my mindset changed from that very day. It means my business is to make you look good, not make clothes for you. Making you look good involves a lot. I could be your barber; I could be the one selling you your ties; I could be the one selling you your accessories; I could be your tailor, or I could be the one selling you your shoes. In essence, that statement changed my approach to fashion.
Maybe the right question is, who is a fashion designer in the true sense?
The question you need to ask is, what is your business? Once you answer that question, the next question should be who is your customer? Once you have answered these two questions, you can know the direction you want to move. It’s just like saying I’m going from Ikeja to Ojuelegba (Lagos suburbs). I must decide from Ikeja that I’m going to Ojuelegba. I don’t just get up and be going and then decide on the way that I’m going to Ojuelegba. I must have a route carefully mapped out as I go. It makes no sense to decide my destination on the way. It means I cannot go through a path that doesn’t lead to Ojuelegba or prolongs my journey.
So essentially, what we all need to do as fashion entrepreneurs is to answer these two pertinent questions. Even along the value chain in fashion designing, there are different levels. There is bespoke, there is ready-to-wear, there is couture, and there are all sorts. So you really need to decide what part of the market you want to face.
Do you mean a bespoke tailor doesn’t need to bother about mass production?
Oh yes, absolutely. Again, this talks about what I have said before. If you know where you are going, you know how to pitch your tent and the business model to use. As a bespoke tailor, you must have fabrics in your store; you must have one or two ready-made garments in your store for display purposes, of which you will have the ones that are waiting for delivery, the ones sent back for alterations, and all. The setting would be different from somebody who is selling inventory.
Bespoke customers come to your store, get measured, and return for fitting before picking the final garment. For ready-to-wear, it’s not the same model. Ready-to-wear is already made; you buy it as it is. Many people do not even understand what they are doing in the first place; they don’t even know who they are selling to. How do you want to reach your target market if you don’t know who you are selling to? How do you want to know the kind of advert you should run and who to target? I tell people that my customers are not on social media. Somebody asked me, ‘why don’t you have a shop at the airport?’ I told the person jokingly, ‘my customers don’t take public flights; they fly private jets.’ You need to be clear about who your customers are.
Did you get your financial record right early on, or were you like most entrepreneurs who can’t
separate personal finance from business funds?
In the beginning, everything came into one purse, and because you are trying to live your best life, you always spend the money carelessly. But before long, I discovered that if I continued like that, I and the business would cease to exist one day. So the need for proper financial records started to happen.
I started by myself, doing the basic profit and loss accounting. Then as it grew bigger and broader, I had to do a separation. Many of my mentors would say, ‘Dapo, next time you give me your personal account as your bank account for business, I’m not going to patronise you anymore.’ I started to bank bit by bit, and it became a part of me after some time. You then understand what those people were saying at the time, that they were not really against you.
Once I understood how to do costing for my business, which is the basis for everything, things got better. You must understand costing. At what point are you losing money? At what point do you know that you are making money? What does it actually cost you to give the product or service? How can you put a mark on it that doesn’t make you exuberant or makes you appealing to your customers?
For instance, if your cost is maybe twenty, I like to use the rule of x3 or at least x2.5. So if I produce for twenty naira, my selling price will be x3; that’s the formula I use. Then when you want to do something like sales, {there is actually nothing like sales, it’s just a gimmick], what you do is, change your 2.5 mark up to 1.5, you will still make a profit, even though it’s smaller profit.
You mentioned you don’t like to use the word ‘luxury’ because it’s been abused by many fashion designers. So, what is luxury?
Luxury is everything. When you say luxury, what fabric are you using? They will say ‘luxury Kaftan,’ and they will use 1,500 naira fabric, and that’s luxury to them. They will use plastic buttons, and it’s luxury to them. So luxury is relative to them. Some people have not seen a certain height of luxury before. What is luxury in someone’s eye is not the same for another person. It depends on people’s exposure. I like to use the word premium because we have considered that the fabrics, the trimmings, and other things are on a certain price level.
Premium has everything to do with, first and foremost, the look and feel of your own store, the look and feel of you as the person selling the product. You don’t expect me to come into a store at the back of nowhere, and you want to sell luxury to me. You should be driving a particular car brand for you even to understand luxury. You are entering a danfo and telling me you want to sell luxury to me.
If you drive a fancy car and try to catch people within that social class, each will give you their kind. That’s why I always look forward to high-level customers. I try to lean into them because they will give me their kind. Like my customer who just left, if he refers five persons to me, I’m sure three of them will be like him, and the remaining two are on their way to that status. So for me, pricing is a function of many things, from your space to your customers.
You cater to the tier one customer base, but you didn’t start like that. How did you position yourself to attract high-level clients?
As I said, I started with friends, classmates, family members, and students. These students became working-class people, and they went on and on and on. See, there is a way excellence speaks for you when you know how to do your stuff. Even the bible says that any man who is diligent in what he does, who understands the trappings and the workings of everything that he does, will not stand before mere men, but he’ll stand before kings. Let’s take kings as captains of industries. Using your own diction, let’s take kings as the tier one people and the elites. There is a way you sell to the elites; your mannerisms and the things you do must align.
I always tell my students that you cannot be more than you are. You cannot be worth ten naira and say you are worth a hundred naira; people can see through you. If your shoes don’t give you away, how you are dressed will give you away. If that does not give you away, your car will give you away, and even the way you talk or speak will give you away. You cannot sell for more than what you are. So as you mature in your ability to sell, you must also be mature in how other people perceive you.
Kenya’s Wendia Gichuru is an Inspiration for Aspiring and Industry Fashion Entrepreneurs
Wandia Gichuru quit her high-paying job as an analyst for agencies like the United Nations Development Programme and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development to pursue her entrepreneurial goals.
The trailblazer had a passion for clothing and believed she could leverage the opportunities in Kenya’s fashion industry. In 2011, Gichuru launched Vivo Activewear. The brand has long since expanded to 14 stores, with a fashion e-commerce platform, ShopZetu, under its belt.
The cost of sacrifice
Wendy Gichuru set things in motion when she decided to leave a great job to pursue her passion. She said in a session back in 2018, “I still haven’t recovered in terms of income. I used to earn a lot more when I was employed than I do now.” Looking that the trajectory of her brand, it’s safe to say that Wendy is the better for decision.
“Your income levels go down, you have to change, you can’t maybe stay at the hotel you usually do when you go on holiday…I used to buy a lot of art. I can’t really afford to do that anymore, but there’s nothing that outweighs the gains of starting a business. Having the opportunity to develop something from scratch and have a bit more control and freedom, I wouldn’t give it up,” she added.
So if you’re looking to turn your idea into something that provides value for people, now is the time. You might have to give up that high-paying job or comfort zone and give up some luxury for some time. Learning from Gichuru, the benefits can outweigh the sacrifice.
Message to a young generation: embrace your vibrance while being ethical
Many young people enter the entrepreneurial space with the get-rich-quick mentality, or they simply don’t want to follow due process. Many controversies have arisen around ethics for some of the leading startups across Africa.
From Gichuru’s perspective, there’s a level of impatience that comes with this generation of entrepreneurs. She said, “There’s a frustration with too much structure, too much containment. There are two sides to every coin. Is that a lack or a plus? It depends on how you look at it.
You might find they were able to achieve more because they believed it could happen, while the older generation wouldn’t have tried. I think they are great”. If you’re one the young bloods, you need to start seeing your energy as a force for good whilst upholding the right ethics.
Gichuru’s daring business model
Vivo used to import many of its clothes, but now almost all of them are made in Nairobi. However, this is a daring move on Gichuru’s path. As it turns out, manufacturing in Kenya may be more expensive than manufacturing in a nation such as China.
Gichuru, on the other hand, believes that local production has advantages. The company places a strong emphasis on testing a product’s popularity before releasing it in larger quantities; having its own factory allows Vivo to experiment as much as it can. It also means less time spent waiting for items from other countries to arrive. Gichuru said it’s all in a bid to provide more diversity in Kenya’s fashion industry.