Salami Fumilayo: The determined fashion designer

Salami Fumilayo Taiwo is the CEO of CiousJay, a start-up that makes Ankara bags, shoes and accessories. As a fashion outfit, CiousJay deals mainly with rebranding of condemned, out-dated bags and shoes. Salami, a Mass Communication graduate of Ibadan Polytechnic, also empowers Nigerian youths by training them on how to make these accessories.
Salami has always been passionate about fashion. She set up the fashion outfit in March this year, with just N45,000. She was able to raise her start-up capital when she was working as a secretary in a firm.
“I felt I couldn’t continue working for people. I had to find something to do for myself and that led me into learning the Ankara craft,” she says.
“When I started, I had only N45,000, which I got from my former job as secretary. I started by learning the craft work and later promoted my page on the social media,” she explains.
Salami tells Start-Up Digest that she created Ciousjay empowerment world page online to reach out to people, pointing out that her efforts were futile at the first attempt.
“I promoted the page to reach many people that are interested in learning Ankara craft and to those that are interested in buying our products as well. Firstly, I promoted a wrong post, and later, I re-promoted the page. Many people didn’t believe that Ciousjay was real; some called it a scam, so we ended up training just four students that month,” she says.
The young entrepreneur stresses that starting the business not easy, but her determination and patience did a magic.
The professional ‘fashionist’ says to succeed in the industry, one must be patient, determined and focused.
“Patience has a lot to do with this business because sometimes things might not turn out the way you want and Ankara craft work is not something people can’t do without. So, I had to learn to convince people about it and needed to be patient because I was working to get a better result,” Salami states.
According to Salami, those values have made her business grow to N700,000 in 20 months, adding that her determination to succeed has revved up the engine of the enterprise.
The determined entrepreneur says she went through so many challenges.
“When I started the online training, I spent a lot of money for promotion, yet there was zero result. After that, many joined my group, calling CiousJay all sort of names. But now, we have more than 5000 likes and 600 trainees,” she states.
On her long term plans, salami intends to empower more people, especially youths and women, by training them to become independent.
She believes this will reduce the rate of unemployment in the society and assist those who are not financially buoyant to learn or create time to learn.
“The training is affordable and it will add more value to the fashion industry in Nigeria and abroad.
“Online training is the best option and Ciousjay online training is very detailed. Many of my students are doing great jobs through our online training,” she adds.
Salami needs N500,000 to empower more youths by providing them with free materials to start up their own businesses.
The entrepreneur says that she has a small outlet but wishes to expand.
She wants the government to provide sophisticated equipment for the fashion industry and ensure that the it is supported the same way tech firms are promoted.
She wants the government to create specific programs that will help businesses start and continue, while also calling for a friendly business environment.
Salami advises youths to start doing something, no matter how small.
“Though, at first, it may be difficult, you will overcome all the challenges with time,” she adds.

 
Angel James