How to sustain African fashion in Nigeria -Iniobong Okon Obinna-Onunkwo, founder and creative director of Little Weaver fashion brand

In the Nigerian constellation of fashion design brands, Little Weavers stands out for the uniqueness of its niche: an Afrocentric fashion brand for young people. For many years, it has remained the leading brand for toddlers and teenagers. Last month, the ‘young people fashion company’ reached a milestone and celebrated its 10th anniversary on December 17, 2023.

In this interview, Iniobong Okon Obinna-Onunkwo, the founder and creative director of Little Weaver, reminisced about the good and the bad times, recounting how the brand weathered the storm and how it is preparing for the next 10 years.
The high-flying asset manager-turned-fashion maven also shared some secrets of the fashion industry, along with pitfalls and low-hanging fruits, which will be handy for aspiring and young fashion designers just setting up their enterprises.

It is just like yesterday when you started this journey. 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. Our vision statement is “Wear Africa.” 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, academics, schools, or a religious entity, or perhaps the Aso-Ebi, 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 Aso-Oke, 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; what type of fabric are we using? If you are using Ankara, what story do we tell in recreating that particular fabric? Or what story does that particular style tell? How are we able to emphasise the finishing? The quality of the fabric is tailored to soothe the skin and also yield proper satisfaction for the ideal customers, who are toddlers, children, and teenagers, as well as the final aspect of that product.

Over the years, tell us which African culture or tribe you have worked on.

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 overemphasised, from the costumes of the Egyptians to those of Angolans, Ethiopians, and South Africans. I have had the opportunity to travel to some of these African countries as well as do my research. I found out that there is something dynamic about African clothing and that is why they need to connect to the younger ones. Another aspect that I think is important is for people to realise that some of these clothes are becoming extinct. Some have been watered down. You see a typical traditional outfit that is supposed to be heavy, like Kente, which is usually supposed to be woven but now we have them as cotton fabrics so it’s super easy to just put them on. That doesn’t tell the true story of the craftsmanship of African clothing.

You have been telling the African story for 10 years through fashion. Let us meet the woman behind these stories.

Ini is a creative person. I am focus-driven and very passionate about African heritage. My story starts with how I transitioned from the asset management industry to the fashion industry. I have had the opportunity for capacity building, and I have a couple of certificates. I have served in different sectors of the hospitality space; I have served as a marketer, life project manager, and product developer. Now, I am the creative director and founder of Little Weaver, which is now 10 years old. I have also served as a volunteer on several platforms, from the African Women Empowerment Programme to the Fashion Designer Association of Nigeria. Currently, I am serving as one of the executives for the Lagos Chambers of Commerce and Industry. It has been a very interesting journey for me.

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 of 10 said, ‘Madam, we would stay here and support you.’ That is talking about people’s support. The second aspect of it was that 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. We did some tests and it was okay. We were able to sell the face masks to big oil companies, supermarkets, and even to individuals who found the face masks very sustainable because they could reuse them. That is a very good example of being creative and innovative. 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 is your advice for anybody who wants to join 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. These days, we hear all sorts of interesting news in the media. So, an entrepreneur is confronted with many questions: How can I position my brand or product to be able to meet my target market? What should I do? How do I leverage the available tools? Is it through the market, technology, or referral?
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 have to be able to ask intelligent questions. What are they thinking? What do I do to make it easy for them to connect to my services and products? What are my customers looking for?
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.

What are your plans for Little Weavers in the next 10 years?

I had called on one of our directors to discuss with him and I informed him that we had a tech invitation. The essence of going for this tech invitation is 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? It’s a very sensitive question for us right now. 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 that has come to stay, and see how we can evolve around it without diluting the authenticity of African culture. We want a situation where we can still get our Aso-Oke. When we hear things like 3D or 5D production of clothing, we wonder, is it going to displace the craftsmen and women who have been providing these woven fabrics? With the advent of AI technology, these are the questions that we need to be able to answer before we can forge forward in the next 10 years.
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, what do you wish you had known before and what lessons do you wish you would have learnt?

The first aspect is the challenges we are still experiencing. As they say, experience is the best teacher. In the next 10 years, there will still be new challenges. I see challenges as an opportunity to learn and prove myself. One of the challenges I have seen is 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 think I understood what structure was all about. However, operating in this particular fashion industry is a peculiar one. You have to understand the industry you are operating in because every industry has its peculiarities. One of the challenges was that I didn’t do a proper assessment of the industry. I just transferred from the asset management industry to the fashion industry, and a lot of things were already going wrong. There are a lot of things that I had to accommodate, starting with creativity. How do you source for talent or manage talent? The difference between the talent in that industry and this industry is that the asset management industry operates in a white-collar talent-driven industry and the other one is a blue-collar so how are you able to work around your relationship with the blue-collar talent? Secondly, understand the dynamics of your industry. How do you want to brand and are you coming into that industry as a brand or a business? Constantly do a self-evaluation. The first question you ask yourself as any normal person is: Am I okay or in the right place? If anything happens to me, do I have a continuity plan? Also, do an assessment that will checkmate where you are coming from and how you want to be able to operate in that particular industry; those assessments will enable you to create surveys and through those surveys, you can amplify them and create a triple effect because some of the surveys that you collate from a particular region will be different from another region because the answers or responses will be different. After all, you are catering to different people with the same service or product. This is one of the things I realised in the industry. I emphasise looking for support again. 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. We got ourselves associated with very interesting people and got ourselves quickly burnt out with those kinds of groups. We also had an opportunity to register with the proper platforms that were able to provide us with access to information, funding, and markets, but before we got to that particular place, we had invested in the wrong people and thought that we were in the proper association that would help us. These were challenges that we faced.
The final aspect is talent. Our industry is very dynamic. First of all, the orientation of some of the craftspeople is pretty poor and I think it’s something that creative leaders should address quickly; it’s very important. 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 that will reorient them from the kind of operation that they initially had. You also have to be able to understand how their thought process works, the kinds of family and friends they connect with and the kind of message that you would like to share with them that will constantly resonate in their minds. You find somebody so talented yet you will be asking, ‘If you are so talented in craftwork, why haven’t you started your business line?’ Then you get close to them and find out that their orientation is pretty poor. So, the essence of the coaching and training is to improve them, and, of course, you know that improving the talent and building their confidence level also helps.
We had a major challenge finding the right talent and retaining it through incentives. These incentives were investments; at the end of the day, we still had to shut down the garment manufacturing arm of the business to continue with the retail aspect. After two years, we came back again to see how we could revive the garment arm and we still had this particular challenge of talent. What has helped us through all of this is the consistency of the support we had from customers—the motivation, feedback, and opportunities we get from customers. We get support that constantly encourages us to keep at it, and the other support comes from government grants and loans. At some point, I lost all of my staff. It was a tipping point for me. Trying to get myself up has been a major challenge.

Give us tips on how you handle yourself through the tough time.

In these 10 years, there have been times when I have felt like shutting down the business and calling it quits. What 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—people connecting with you in your space. A wise man once said that if you look at five of your friends and they are all successful, you are the sixth successful person. I had support from family, friends, clients, and also the platforms where I was engaged.

 

What are the highlights of Little Weavers in the past 10 years?

The highlight for Little Weavers will start from the beginning, where we were able to identify the kind of product that resonated with the right target market. The second aspect is the amplification of our brand by wearing some of our clothing to meet with some African presidents and advocating for girl child education and empowerment.
Another highlight was when we had the maiden edition at Four Point in 2015 where we invited people from the cultural department of embassies and their feedback was very positive; they liked what they saw. We had over 80 children showcasing different African clothing and we hope that in the upcoming years, we will be able to continue after our maiden edition.
Another highlight was the exhibition we had at different places from Lagos to Abuja and the final part of it was the climax at the African Fashion Week Nigeria, where the Ooni of Ife was invited. The feedback was very encouraging—that we were sharing the message of African culture through our clothing and recreating a very beautiful aesthetic on the runway for him—he had never seen that kind of thing before. Those kinds of messages were very motivational and encouraging for me and the brand.

 

Let’s talk about the African fashion sector, the trends, challenges, and growth opportunities.

For the African industry, I am very impressed because, in the creative industry, we have entertainment, media, and fashion tech people. We are happy that we are also upcoming and 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 the 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 some things 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.