How creativity drives Mimmi’s fashion business
Mimmi Nwosu is the founder and chief executive officer of Mimi’s Kreationz Limited, a fashion outfit in Lagos. She has nine years experience in the fashion industry and is
a graduate of economics with a passion to wear her own designs. The quest for wearing a design she made herself prompted her to acquire fashion skills immediately after her secondary education in 2008. After completing her university education, Mimmi started ‘Mimi’s Kreationz’ in 2013 and has, since then, trained over 20 people in designs and styles.
Mimmi started her business with an initial capital of N30, 000 which she used in buying her first sewing machine and accessories needed for the business. Mimmi told Start-Up Digest that she raised her own capital from private savings during her National Youth Service year.
Before starting her business, Mimmi had to seek employment to raise additional capital to expand. She took up a job as a customer service agent for an e-commerce firm and continued to run her fashion business on weekends.
According to her, the e-commerce firm provided her a platform to sell her own products across the country, as she was marketing her designs along the company’s products to clients. “I had the opportunity to project and sell my products using the business brand name ‘Mimi’s Kreationz’ to various customers nationwide under the e-commerce platform of the organisation I work for,” she said.
Mimmi told Start-Up Digest that the hunger for success in her business made her enroll in a fashion school and for a post-graduate programme to acquire more skills and creativity. She noted that creativity was the key for a successful fashion business, stressing that the business could only be sustained when the entrepreneur did things differently.
In her words, “The fashion industry in Nigeria is wide, insatiable and calling on the creative ones and those who can usher in a new fashion culture.”
When asked how she has been surviving recession, Mimmi said she still worked to raise more money for her business and sowing simultaneously. She stated that she was channelling available resources to most profitable use.
Mimmi noted that despite recession, her customer base had been on the rise, as patronage of her products rose over the last year.
When asked about the challenges she has been facing since starting, the economics graduate stated that it had not been all rosy as her business suffered seriously from poor power supply. Mimmi spends most of the night sewing for her customers.
According to her, poor power supply had been a burden as she used generators for most of her work, a situation that had continued to shoot-up her production cost. She likewise said that rising cost of fabrics and accessories were major challenges she faced.
Mimmi urged the government to resolve the issue around poor power supply as this would help businesses to survive and drive economic growth and development. She noted that many business failed after the first year due to rising production cost resulting from power cuts, which contributed about 60 percent of her cost.
When asked what she has done differently to still remain in business, she said, “I always have it at the back of my mind that customers are kings and customer satisfaction is essential. Regularly, I revisit my purpose and constantly remind myself while I started my business. I try to delivery beyond expectations; I reflect and amend certain business decisions constantly.”
Josephine Okojie