By Josfyn Uba
In the Nigerian fashion industry, Little Weavers stands out for the uniqueness of its niche. It is an Afrocentric fashion brand for young people. They just celebrated their 10th anniversary recently.
In this interview, Iniobong Obinna-Onunkwo, the creative hands behind Little Weavers, recounted how the brand weathered the storm and their vision for the next decade.
How have you been able to retain your authenticity?
We have been able to retain the authenticity of our brand through our stories, keeping in line with our vision. We believe the young ones must understand the essence of wearing African clothing, the patterns and the craftwork, as well as the dynamics around wearing African clothing. Whether you are wearing it as a lifestyle or you have been advised by your different institutions where people wear the same fabric for an event or ceremony, these young ones must understand that putting on a particular type of woven fabric, whether it’s coming from Ghana, that is, Kente, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, or the western part of Nigeria, which is the Asoke, or the Akwete of the eastern region or even of different African countries. We have to tell that story, and that consistency comes from what we are doing during our production process that product.
Can you tell us the African culture or tribe you have worked on over the years?
I will reiterate our vision, which is “Wear Africa.” The essence of it is creating sustainable African clothing and fashion brands for young ones. We look at all different tribes. By the way, there’s beauty in diversity, and the beauty of African culture cannot be overemphasized, from the costumes of the Egyptians to those of Angolans, Ethiopians, and South Africans. I found out that there is something dynamic about African clothing. That is why they need to connect to the younger ones. Another important aspect is for people to realize that some of these clothes are becoming extinct while others have been watered down.
In this downturn, how have you been able to keep your head above water?
It›s very important for everyone, whether you are an entrepreneur or not, to have a support system. Without a support system, you cannot manifest the best potential that you have. Your support system can be financial, people support, business support, educational support, mentoring support, and physical support like physical resources that can help you in terms of business growth.
The second aspect is creativity and innovation. You have to be flexible and think of creative ways to improve. For example, during the pandemic, at some point, I decided to shut down the factory and my staff supported me in their own small ways. They were very determined to change the idea of creating clothing by using the idea of sustainable fashion. They recycled some of our pieces as face masks. So during the pandemic, we were able to change the dynamics of our operation to suit the current situation of the economy at that time and we have been able to evolve even after that.
What are your plans for little weavers in the next 10 years?
We had a tech invitation in order to understand how this new advent of AI technology is going to serve the business. How do we fuse AI technology with fashion? How will it sustain us? How shall we use AI to showcase our kind of service or product to our target market? In the next few years, technology will have taken over a lot of businesses; what do we do? And until we can fully answer the question, we will still be operating business as usual. In the next 10 years, we will leverage the AI technology , and see how we can evolve around it without diluting the authenticity of African culture. Apart from that, these technologies also affect our market share. How are we able to seize that market share so that we can change and manage the direction of how people perceive the brand? Are we connecting effectively with the younger ones? Do they see our brand as a trending brand? Do they like the brand? What’s so unique, funky, or special about the brand? And why should it be Little Weavers? These are questions taken into consideration and must be answered effectively to be able to move on to the next 10 years.
What are the challenges in your journey and what do you wish you had known before and what lessons do you wish you would have learnt?
There will always be new challenges. I see challenges as an opportunity to learn and improve. One of the challenges is in branding. You must invest so much in branding. When I got into the fashion industry, because of the experience I had in the asset management industry, I understood what structure was all about. However, operating in this particular fashion industry is a peculiar one. One of the challenges was that I didn’t do a proper assessment of the industry and a lot of things went wrong. There are a lot of things that I had to accommodate, starting with creativity and constant self-evaluation. At some point in the business, we didn’t have working capital; we had to leverage government grants and look at those associations that we were connected with to provide us with loans to be able to forge forward. Then you also have to know what kind of association to join. In that journey, I had challenges. Before we got to that particular place, we had invested in the wrong people
Another point in that talent aspect is human resources. When they come into the business, you have to be able to nurture them, create incentives to motivate them, and create a training programme or acceleration programme for the purpose of reorientation. So, the essence of the coaching and training is to improve them, and, of course, improving the talent and building their confidence level also helps.
We had a major challenge finding the right talent and retaining it through incentives. At some point, I lost all of my staff which was a major challenge.
How did you handle yourself through these tough times?
I will advise people from my own experience is that you should be very close to your creator; you must have balanced spiritual support where you can meditate and seek God earnestly because, for me, that is where the answers come from.
When you feel that you are on failing ground, all other grounds may be failing but you are standing on a solid rock. My solid rock was God. In my case, the tipping point was going for capacity building and still having this thought of shutting down, doing everything that could be done in the entrepreneurial test but still having this feeling of being a failure because of the expectations I had put on myself.
Another aspect I would mention is support. Having the right network of people around you and people connecting with you in your space is important. I had support from family, friends, clients, and also the platforms where I was engaged.
Let’s talk about the African fashion sector, the trends, challenges, and growth opportunities. Can you tell me about these?
For the African industry, I am very impressed because, under the creative industry, we have entertainment, media, and fashion tech people. We are happy that we are building up our numbers in the creative industry and, of course, we have our value chain in the fashion industry. We have African Fashion Week Nigeria and we also have African Fashion Week London. We have other institutions that are doing well; we recently just had the GTB Fashion Week. We have so many that are doing well by creating access to markets for our fashion entrepreneurs and also creating brand awareness, which is very important because people, especially those in diaspora, are connecting more. We have a lot of talents leaving the shores of Nigeria, but at the same time, these are people that we would like to connect with Africa or Nigeria for our cultural fashion and, of course, the entertainment industry like Nollywood has been amplified in the diaspora.
I think that there are some things that could be improved upon that they are currently working on. We have had roundtable discussions on taxes and how they can support women-led enterprises. I am very grateful because I also had the privilege and opportunity to receive a grant from one such foreign entity supporting female entrepreneurs. I think they need to have more discussions besides taxing, funding, and access to markets, and of course one that they are currently discussing is the African Trade Agreement, where we can have access to markets in neighbouring African countries. I think they need to look at that policy and how it will be able to impact positively on the value chain in the fashion industry. Of course, that will also affect Little Weavers because it will allow us to leverage this policy and grow not just within Nigeria but also in other African regions and, at the same time, connect with the right network that will provide us with the access to explore more of their cultural fabrics, especially most of them that are becoming extinct. I think some of these are what should be addressed to maintain the sustainability of African fashion in Nigeria.
What is your advice for new entrants into the fashion industry?
Doing business anywhere in this current global economy is very challenging. There are import and export challenges due to the forex fluctuations. So, you have to sit back and look at the nature of your product or the services that you are offering to my kind of target market. You need to work around certain things that will help you accelerate new ideas and create new product lines that would satisfy the needs of the target market. You just have to be creative, leveraging existing tools and technology. Be constantly seeking ways to improve on connecting with your customers and cultivating the support you require.