‘Why Vlisco exited the Nigeria market’

Soji Odedina, group managing director of First Katalyst Marketing, the agency which consulted for Vlisco in Nigeria has disclosed that textile printing company based in Helmond, the Netherlands at some point left the Nigeria market when their products were being counterfeited and sold at a very cheap rate in the country.

Although there are reports that the company’s decision to relocate five years back was borne out of the clampdown on the alternative source of foreign exchange which the company claimed was legitimately supplying its dollar needs as the CBN supplies then was not enough.

The CBN at the time deployed several measures to curb abuses in the foreign exchange market and unify the rates amid scarcity, more operators in the real sector then described the move as causing disruption in inventory supplies and production processes.

Sources close to the company said that beyond the CBN issues then, Vlisco fabrics were being counterfeited, which affected their sales at the time.

Odedina said, “Anything the Chinese touches, if you are not careful, leaves your hands. I’ll give you one example, a company called Vlisco was making Wax Hollandais in Holland and bringing them to Nigeria.

“The Chinese started making copy materials. When a design comes from Holland, the Chinese will copy it and send it into the market and it will be 20 times cheaper than the original from Holland. Those guys have left Nigeria. They were my client at the time.

“That is why we are advocating for government policies. Government must be deliberate about these things. They must protect local materials.”

Odedina who is also a partner of the Wear Nigeria project said Nigeria is going through a lot right now and unless Nigerians look inwards and begin to patronise what local products, it probably will not get out of the wood.

He spoke on the need to embrace the Nigerian idea and Nigerian concept and this is why this is titled ‘Wear Nigeria’.

“In everything we do; our music and Nollywood is pushing the frontiers. Why not our fashion? This is the next stage for us. We need to push this. This is a foreign exchange earner for us, if we push it correctly. There are Nigerians who want to wear Nigeria.

“Anytime I travel outside Nigeria, I wear Nigerian fabrics and I see white people who would come up and tell me they like what I’m wearing. So, the opportunity is there to complement whatever is going on in the oil sector to make Nigerian textile and fabrics become global.

“Ghana has done better than us because their fabric, ‘Kente’ is globally recognised. Right now, we need to push our own fabrics to the global stage and that is why we are doing this. After Wear Nigeria, the next project for us will be ‘Wear Africa’, so that we take all African countries onboard and we push them to the world,” he said.

At the recently concluded ‘Wear Nigeria’ event, Odedina noted that for the first time, they brought in the weavers so that people will see the process of making the fabrics.

“Before I was born, this was the same manual processing. Now we are graduating engineers every day from our schools, polytechnic and universities. Shouldn’t they begin to focus on opportunities like these?

“Our weavers can come together in a cooperative and can then do well. To get Aso Oke for your wedding, you have to wait two weeks for them. You pay and they bring it to you. Who wants to wait? So we need serious investments and technology and government policies,” he added.