As Lagos, the fashion capital of the world celebrated Africa as shaping fashion’s future at the Heineken Lagos Fashion Week 2022, Sunlight detergent company hosted both small and large-scale fashion entrepreneurs on a business skills workshop session at the fashion weekend on Saturday 29th October 2022.
Held at the small Balmoral at Federal Palace Hotel Lagos, the event witnessed speakers such as Tosin Olaseinde, CEO of Money Africa, Claire Idera, Founder of CI Workshop, and Shola Babatunde CEO of OSC fashion as invitees got first-hand lectures on how to run the business of fashion for the local and global market.
Tosin Olaseinde was the first speaker to be introduced by the event’s moderator Kemi Ogunleye, who spoke on the topic “How to invest in a recession”, in her speech she mentioned that people in the fashion business should learn how to pay themselves a structured salary from their business profit instead of dipping into to their business account.
She also advised that they should get a business name and account, track expenses by separating business expenses from personal expenses, leverage technical software, and application, invest in their personal capacity, and so on.
Read also: Takeaways from Heineken Lagos Fashion Week 2022
Claire Idera spoke on the topic “How to monetize your creativity”. She mentioned that business owners should know their value as it gives them more confidence, and identify their Strenght, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. She also stressed self-introspection to know what they are good at and do seamlessly. During her speech, she briefed on how she started her business starting from making N5000 for work she charges for over N1 million and advised the potential business owner to start their business regardless of their age or recent trends.
Idera added that business owners should give back to the community by impacting the knowledge and skills they’ve learned and acquired as they were building their business from scratch to other business owners younger or less experienced than they are through mentorship programs.
Shola Babatunde, the final speaker of the event spoke on how to run a successful fashion business in a difficult environment. She said that one should know themselves and create a niche for themselves. In her speech, she said, “ You cannot target everybody and they want to sell to everyone making menswear, female wear, shoes, bags, and makeup but it’s best to understand your target market.”.
Being in the business of fashion for over 20 years Babatunde gave some of the criteria to understand a target market as age, gender, location, and disposable income.
