FASHION BY ALL

The Problem

Within the previous decade, Nigeria’s fashion industry has grown in size and sophistication, providing new opportunities to local talents, and attracting much global attention. Despite this fact, the entry barrier into fashion business remains high for a significant portion of the population. Most aspiring designers and small label owners are underfunded and lacking the capacity to take their products or skills successfully to market. 

The Solution

By leveraging the power of digital connectivity, we will create an Ecosystem based on the communitarian economic model. Communal economy is an age-long system that facilitates self-sustainability, product ownership, and equitable profit sharing among teams. Our community will enable seamless collaboration between clothing labels, creative designers, social media influencers, marketers and manufacturers. 

Global Scale

Community members will work remotely globally. Tunde in Nigeria can design a t-shirt for Faridah's brand in Sudan while Kwame manufactures it and dispatches to Mensa in Ghana.

The Nigerian economy took a massive hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a long running dependence on oil revenues which is currently trading below $40 per barrel. 

Over the past years, unemployment has grown to become one of the major challenges in the Nigerian economy. The unemployment rate in Nigeria has risen from 10.4% in January 2016 to trending at 23.1% in 2020 and projected rise to 33.5% by 2021.  

Nigeria has about 300 degree awarding institutions which enrolls about 2 million students and graduates about 600,000 yearly. On the lope-side, there are comparably little organizations who are ready and willing to absorb this teeming population into the workforce. 

As a result, Nigeria has a high rate of jobless, though educated, people who require other avenues of earning income. Sadly, much of this cohort - between age 18-25 lack the required financial and technical resources to start a business. 

Entrepreneurship is widely expected to step in the gap as a means of empowering young people with the skills and know-how to create a prosperous economy now and in the future.

Sources 

1)Naira Metrics: https://nairametrics.com/2019/...

2)Trading Economics: https://tradingeconomics.com/n...

3) Oil Prices: https://oilprice.com/oil-price...

4) Statista: https://www-statista-com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/stati...

5) All Africa https://allafrica.com/stories/...

What is it?

It is an online platform that facilitates collaboration between young fashion entrepreneurs. Our solution harnesses the core elements of a collective economy and will enable users to co-create clothing outfits remotely and sell to diverse audiences. 

What does it do?

It allows for independent people to monetize their skillsets from their own comfort.  

Processes and technology

Our core technology is Digital Connectivity and some of the processes include:

Design: Every clothing label is assigned a creative designers who will work with them to create their outfits per time. 

Exhibition: Mock-ups of these outfits are then created and sent to us for upload.

Sales: After uploading, the links to each products are shared with marketers and influencers who will drive sales to the platform. Customer will make purchase on either our website or social media channels using the marketer's code.

Production: The factory on receiving the order will produce the outfit with the clothing line's label and make it ready for dispatch within 48 hours and delivered within 3-5days.

Reconciliation and Payment: Account Reconciliation is made weekly to know how much is due to everyone involved in the process and payment is made.

Who are they?

Our target population is the demographic group between ages 18 and 35; a majority of whom are either in tertiary institutions, fresh graduates, in-between jobs, or gainfully employed but seeking another stream of income. 

What are you doing to understand their needs?

As a customer-responsive platform we pay attention to user feedback at every stage of product design.

1. We carried our an online survey to know and understand our demography.
2. A focus group was surveyed at the University of Lagos where we gathered that students are involved in various entrepreneurship activities and seek more opportunities.
3. More than 80% of our respondents were interested in a business opportunity such as the FABALL community.
4. We set out to start the community with 20 members who have register for our pilot group. 
5. Conversations are being held to enhance the product roadmap. 

We are engaging them through phone calls, emails and whatsApp groups.

How will the solution address their needs?

• Our solution will provide an alternative income stream for members of the community.
• It will teach users how to build, launch, and scale a product.
• The platform will act to empower user with other soft entrepreneurial skills.

The poverty level for the sub-Saharan Africa is about 41% and is also home to 27 out of the world’s 28 poorest countries.

With the combination of institutional corruption, resource constraint and COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment rate in Africa is projected to get even higher and the governments cannot effectively manage the scale of these challenges alone.

To get Africa to a position of sufficiency, we need to embark on massive industrialization projects, break the barriers of starting businesses and include many people to participate in economic development.

Our solution aims to do this precisely in the African fashion industry.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog...

Our solution is innovative for leveraging mobile technology and the internet to connect talents to markets. We marry the indigenous communal economy system of doing business with modern day technology. We employ the core principles of Design Thinking and social innovation methodologies to validate our product hypothesis and continue to do so at every point of the product lifecycle. 

Because we’re targeting an underserved population of people, we do not have known like-for-like competitors at the moment. Before the digital economy, most people could not enter into creative engagement without certification from an accredited institution. Our solution removes the bottleneck that impedes participation in the “workforce” by putting talent, creativity, and diligence first. Ultimately, our solution is unique for presenting a smart and intuitive way to engage talents and help them become part of the creative economy.

Our solution relies mainly on mobile connectivity and little cost file sharing to enable collaboration among creatives. Our solution functions as a melting pot for distributed teams to seamlessly collaborate, develop their product ideas, and get rewarded for their effort. 

The technology is smart, simple, intuitive and is poised to disrupt the African digital space. 

We will be modeling our technology after already existing successful platforms.

1. Our platform will allow interact within groups. Facebook, Telegram and Slack are being copied for this.
2. Our platform will allow for community members to create their designs for upload. Printfy, Rushorder tees, Teespring technology are being mirrored for this.
3. Our platform will allow for e-commerce. Amazon is being mirrored
4. Community members will be able to raise funds through the sale of merchandize. Teespring is being mirrored for this. 

Our solution thrives on the basic assumption that a collective is more powerful than the sum of its parts. While individual members of our community have capabilities which are in-demand (e.g. graphic design) it is demonstrably clear that these skills help to create a wider variety of products in creative collaboration and command a higher margin when combined with others like sales and marketing. 

As a result, our product thesis is to identify ways of engaging diverse talents to collaborate in designing cutting edge ideas in fashion and business logistics. 
Our target population:

College students: through various questionnaire and focus group research, we were able to understand their need for starting an entrepreneurship journey while in school. We interviewed about 57 students and 46 agreed to the need for a steam of income popularly called "side hustle". We aim to provide an avenue to introduce them to hands-on experience and reliable information on starting and scaling up a business. 

Out of Job/ Working Class: The idea for this platform was birthed because of the need to help this sect of people. The job instability and low income earned has driven a lot of people to start some businesses which eventually failed and capital lost. In some cases they are too scared to start their entrepreneurship journey because of the lack of capacity. As an organization, we currently work with 8 clothing lines who don't have the capacity to operate their business without support. Creating this ecosystem is for the purpose of putting a structure to an already existing business model and opening the opportunity for a wider population. 

We have identified some of the biggest stumbling blocks to becoming an entrepreneur in this economy which includes designing a business plan, raising funding, production, marketing, logistics and also finding a supportive community that provides the critical feedback and mentorship necessary for talent development. Our ecosystem will serve therefore as a hub where creative ideas and exciting talent in fashion are discovered, designed, and delivered to the people who most need them and on time.

The current number of people you’re serving:

The platform will launch by July 1st, we intended to start lean with only 20 and we are currently working with them. The categories where they indicated interests are:

Clothing labels: 11

Graphic Designers :4

Marketers & Influencers  :4

Blogger: 1

The number you’ll be serving in one year

We intend grow organically by increasing our number (after the 3 month pilot phase) from 20 to 100 by year end 2020, with a growth of an average of 200 per month starting from January 2021, we intend to have a solid community of 2,000 Nigerian youth as members of our community by September 2021.  

The number you’ll be serving in five years

In five years, we would have extended our reach to 2 other African Countries namely Ghana and Kenya and by year end 2025 we hope to have reached about 50,000 people.

How we will grow our community

• We will grow majorly through social media, grass root engagement and referral programs. 
• We will diversify, increase the opportunities and products from fashion to other sectors such as education, beauty, etc. such that everyone will be able to find a place where they fit into. 
• We will drive engagement and visibility through partnerships.
• We will also drive inclusion through visits to places where our targeted audiences can be found. Places like school, malls, events, cinemas and camps will be visited.

My goal and driving force as a founder is to transform lives and restore hope in the African youth. Our community sets out to provide enough leverage to ensure that every African youth can successfully deploy their skills in making a decent living wherever they may be. 

Launching in July 2020, we aim to start with a team of 20 talents split into groups. This cohort of 20 is currently undergoing orientation phase where they will be trained and equipped for the coming months. 

We are closely monitoring the feedback and reviews from this pilot test to determine how the platform will be adjusted for user-fit over the next 3 months. Our objective is to grow organically by adding more community members monthly from October 2020 to end the year with a minimum of 100 members.

By September 2021, on our current product roadmap, we will release the crowd-funding feature on our website which would enable students raise funds for school projects, school fees and other purposes through our website. Our target for is to help 20,000 people raise 1billion Naira ($2.6 million) in 1 year.

Already, some of our respondents from user interviews are requesting that we open up the community for other product range outside of fashion. We are a community-first platform and open to considering multiple options if the business case is strong enough.

Within the next five years, we would be actively looking to extending our product offers to other African countries, notably Ghana and Kenya.

Financial Barriers: Out dream is to impact Africa greatly on a scales of 5% of the youth population on our platform in 20 years. We currently do not have the financial capacity to run a project as huge as this. Running this project lean will deter us from achieving this feat.

Technology: We currently don't have access to the type of technology required for running this platform. Technology is required for Collaboration, Finance, Manufacturing, Logistics and Grass-root engagement.

Buying Behaviour: Our targeted audience do not usually purchase online, they will rather purchase on social media. And they prefer to pay for products on delivery.

Educational Barriers: Though our target is the youth and the working class, we also want to reach the poor which educational barriers may prevent us.

Logistics: We intend to start with Lagos and the extend our reach to all the 36 states in Nigeria. The logistics of moving products is huge

Human Resources: We need people who will handle the jobs of Administration, Human Resources, Financial, Website etc

Cultural Barriers: Penetrating new region may require our physical presences and we may experience some pushbacks.

Production: We currently do not have the requires resources to procure all the manufacturing needs of this community.

Social Amenities: Lack of social amenities has hampered a lot of businesses in Nigeria and Africa.

Changes in Government: Instability in the African politics and policies has killed a lot of businesses.

• Financial Barriers: We intent to raise a capital of $500,000 to start this business. It will give us the leverage required to reach and help as many people as possible.
• Technology: We will continually invest in technology as the need arises.
• Buying Behaviour: Apart from having a community via website/app, we will also leverage on other platforms and have customer touch points all at least 4 major platforms where our customers gather namely Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter.
• Educational Barriers: We will create processes that allows smaller phones to interact with us via phone calls or SMS. We will also create solutions that allows the inclusion of the uneducated. Especially the women.
• Logistics: We will partner with already existing logistics companies that operate in the areas where we have businesses.
• Human Resources: We will employ people to fill in Human Resource gaps only when the needs arises
• Cultural Barriers: We will do our research properly and will always work with residents and leaders of every environments where we want to penetrate for ease of access to our target. We will focus more on the girl child because they are usually marginalized.
• Production: We will procure needed production requirements as the need arises.
• Social Amenities: We will procure needed production requirements as the need arises
• Changes in Government: We will utilize sound economic indices and make wise business decisions.

• 5 full-time staff
• 3 part-time staff
• 2 trainees
• 3 contractors

I believe we are not only skilled but well positioned for delivering a solution such as this because:

• I have been running this business officially since 2011.
• I worked in the banking industry while running this business alongside. I was opportune to work with people of various spheres, tech companies and international organizations.
•  As a Product Managers I was hands-on in delivering customer-centric solutions.
• I understand what it feels like to invest in a business and lose the capital within a year while I was in the banking industry. 
• I have experiences that span across Risk Management, Retail Banking, Financial Inclusion, Youth Banking, Internal Communication, Logistics, Campaigns and Marketing.
• I am currently enrolled in a top Executive MBA school in Africa (Lagos Business School), I will finish my program by September 2020 and I believe I have the Managerial Capacity and network for such a project as this.
• Our current manufacturing team are experienced and we worked together for more than 5 years.
• I am passionate about helping people grow their businesses.
• We have an experienced digital marketer who has over 9 years experience on our team.
• We have a web programmer and an app developer on our team.
• We have an experienced operations manager on our team.

We are currently not partnering with other organizations but as the need arises, we will be happy to initiate a partnership. 

Key partners

• Community Members
• The Production facility
• Logistics Company
• Technology Company
• Advertising agencies
• Social Media 
• Website / App Managers
• Bloggers

Key Activities

• Group Collaboration
• Advertisements
• Taking Orders
• Production
• Logistics
• Managing risks
• Managing the platform

Key Resources

• Finances
• Quality Products
• The right communication tools and channels for collaboration
• The right logistics tools and channels

Value Propositions

• Breaking the barriers of starting a clothing Business.
• Zero capital required.
• Free Training 
• Support system from the community.
• Poverty alleviation
• Reduction of crime rate amongst youth by providing a legal source of wealth creation.
• Reduction of Unemployment rate and improving the economy by making more people entrepreneurs.

Customer Relationships

• Admin manager for each group who makes sure there is an effective collaboration
• 24 hours customer service relations/personnels

Channels

• Website/App
• Instagram
• Facebook
• WhatsApp
• Twitter
• Google forms

Age Demography (17-35)

• Students at Tertiary Institutions
• Working Class People
• Fashion Entrepreneurs
• Creative Artists
• Marketers

Cost Structure 1

Customer Pays for Product

Product is delivered

Profit is split with stakeholders

Cost Structure 2

Customer orders Product

Product is delivered

Customer pays

Profit is split with stakeholders

Revenue Streams

• Sales of Products
• Logistics
• Grants
• Advertising on our platform
• Collaboration Opportunities with other brands

We are confident that our platform has a strong potential to be sustainable due to the market size we are targeting.

We are willing to bootstrap and work on a lean structure in the earliest days, driving revenue with cost-efficient but superior marketing effort. 

At the same time, we are actively seeking to raise funding - and related leverages - by applying to grants and equity investors.

The project will also run self sustaining as profits generated after all stakeholders have been paid will be plowed back into the business so as to ensure the future sustainability of the business.

The future plans is for the business to be able to run its and grow into a global brand. 

I applied to Solve because I believe the organization can support our path to creating an economically viable African future. Some of the challenges we know we can get support for are:

Financial: To achieve our dreams of impacting 5% of African youth by making them financially independent by 2040, we require your financial support to create this platform and scale up to the Global level.

Technology: Technology is the life blood of our solution without which we will not be able to operate. We require technology that ensures ease of collaboration, ease of accounting, ease of production, ease of operation, ease of logistics, ease of customer relations.

Logistics: Logistics ensures that resources are moved to where they are required and done in good time. We require support for importation of products, movement to production facilities and dispatching to customer

Human Resources: Human capital is the most essential for our business. We need professionals who can provide tech supports, customer service support and advisory services

Our partnership goals is to collaborate with all our partners either physically or virtually. We want to work with people who believe in what we are doing, are passionate about helping us and are willing to give their time and services to our growth

• Tech Companies such as Microsoft and Facebook.
• Companies who currently work in Africa to develop the youth and create employment such as  Shetrades Commonwealth.
• NGOs who advocates for Women and the Girl Child such as Women's World banking.

We are not restricted to these, we are will to work with as many partners as possible.

Being a woman led business, we are passionate about helping women and the girl child. We believe women have been marginalized for so long and we want to help them gain their voices. Being financially independent is the starting point for helping them gain their voices.

We believe that women hold the key to Africa's financial future and we need to start promoting women in entrepreneurship. Our platform is positioned to break all barriers to entry and remove all forms of stereotype.

We intend to create a broader opportunity for the female gender on our platform. We will stress more of female inclusion and get involved in programs and partnerships that promote the Girl Child Education.

We have been engaged in activities that promotes the girl child in the past and with your support we will be able to do more.

Soft skills are required for the future of work and entrepreneurship. Our target is the youth population especially college students.

Through our platform, the barriers to starting a business is broken down, we will be able to help them broaden their ideas about the work place and position them better for entrepreneurship.

We will partner with schools on Student-Led activities and will encourage entrepreneurship amongst them. Unemployment is on the raise and 35% of the Nigerian youth may be out of Jobs in 2021. We want to help more college students to start their entrepreneurship careers while in school.

Our solution marries the indigenous communal economy system of doing business with modern day technology. We explore the existing solution that has been used in Africa for centuries as the core principles of Design Thinking and social innovation methodologies to validate our product hypothesis and continue to do so at every point of the product lifecycle. 

Because we’re targeting an underserved population of people, we do not have known like-for-like competitors at the moment. Before the digital economy, most people could not enter into creative engagement without certification from an accredited institution. Our solution removes the bottleneck that impedes participation in the “workforce” by putting talent, creativity, and diligence first. Ultimately, our solution is unique for presenting a smart and intuitive way to engage talents and help them become part of the creative economy.