About my music
Having released three projects previously (The Ibadan/Lagos/London mixtape, The CityToCity EP, and Egypt, The EP) over the last eight or so years, I’ll be dropping my debut album sometime this year. All I can say about it right now is passion; it’s a project I have put my heart and soul into and I ensure I speak the truth, hoping I’ll deliver my message to my fans, whoever and wherever they may be!
Why delve into urban lifestyle fashion brand?
Creativity has no limits. OYL Signature is a fashion and lifestyle brand with a vision of retailing uniquely designed accessories and apparels from a Nigerian perspective. We are currently building a portfolio of unique products that are not only comparable internationally when it comes to product quality but in design aesthetics. In short, our primary objective is to build a reputable brand of notable value with products internationally recognisable designs and comparable manufacturing quality. I know it’s easier said than done, but we are here for the long run.
The company currently retails its products under 2 sub brands – OYL Signature collection and the Novelty Sports Collection. OYL Signature Collection caters an array of OYL branded fashion and lifestyle accessories which currently include the Flair Tag (a stainless steel chain & pendant design), the Friends’ Cuff, the INVAs Cuff, BCDC Hand Chain, the Meander Charm Bracelets, Clutch Leather Bracelets (our current range of wrist wear accessories) and the Vanity Ring (currently our only finger ring design).
The Novelty Sports Collection, also known as NSC, is an annual capsule collection of apparel. This sub-brand was created to cater for the teeming urban street wear culture and the immediate ‘sports-casual’ needs of our growing clientele. We introduced our first product under this brand name sometime in 2016 – The Novelty Hat (a simplistic snap back design), a product we are proud to say we have retailed over 1000 unit till date. On the 13th of August last year, we formally launched NSC-17 Limited Edition capsule collection, which included a new hat, lux sweatshirts and crop tops for the ladies. Right now plans are already on for the introduction of NSC-18 capsule for next year, in a grander manner hopefully.
How were you encouraged to start off a fully Nigerian brand/identity?
Earlier last year, my business partner and I travelled to Aba, which is reputably the headquarters for textile marketing and manufacturing in Nigeria. Our goal was to simply explore and understudy the vast marketing region, in the hopes of developing valuable business relationships and connections for our future product development needs, most especially for our NSC sub-brand. While this proved to be a fruitful trip in terms of new knowledge gained and a general exposure to huge deposit of raw materials, two Lagos boys with dreams of creating ‘an internationally reputable fashion products brand’ quickly came to the realisation that it is systematically cheaper to manufacture knock-off Versace pants than it was to produce an original NSC sweatshirt. Amazing right?
How we coped with the recession in 2016…
When the recession hit in 2016, it couldn’t have come at a more trying period. We had just placed a bulk order for our first OYL branded design – The friends’ cuff. Everything was good to go, prices had been set, marketing plans in place, packaging items sourced, and a few pre-orders had even come in. We had even paid our deposit to the manufacturers and were just waiting eagerly to receive our shipment from our overseas partners so we could hit the ground running. We had calculated our profit margins, and were sure we were going to be smiling to the bank on this one. All of a sudden, the naira crashed, and it didn’t just crash, it kept crashing. I was totally confused, I mean I had just put in all my savings, and had also gotten my business partner to buy into the plan. He had trusted my creativity, believing in the vision he had just bought into the company, and this was our first outing as partners. What were we going to do? How could we salvage this? How were we going to survive this? All these questions kept running through my head. The answer was simple, nothing! Nothing at all! We had no choice, we decided to follow the course, trust the plan. One of the major lessons I picked up in business school is that a successful business is not one without challenges, and that beyond profitability and return on investments, the health of the business is determined by the proprietors’ ability to keep the ‘machine’ running, especially at the most trying of times, and this was definitely one of those trying times. We went ahead with all our plans for the product, kept the preset prices, and even had to deal with manufacturing errors that eventually forced us to drop the prices further. However, I am proud to say we completely sold out that product, and it is such a customer favourite that we have already set out plans to release an upgraded version of the design for the year 2018, based on customer feedback. Even though by the time we checked our books for 2016, we ended up taking a huge financial loss of about N2 million in our first fully operational year, we have been able to learn from our mistakes, re-strategize and stabilize in 2017, now we are focused and ready to give 2018 all it takes.
Retail fashion as a challenge in Nigeria
Retail fashion is a challenge in itself where Nigeria is concerned. The majority of the renowned and financial successful fashion labels in Nigeria deal primarily in bespoke fashion as opposed to ‘ready-made’. While a few brands like TT Dalk, David Wej, etc have managed to thrive in the retail-products market, the reality still remains that most Nigerian brands are not necessarily in health competitions with each other. Rather we are generally tasked with competing against foreign brands (mostly knock-off products) that are not in any way tasked with our socio-economic realities. However, we are not perturbed, we are young and resilient and are determined to reach our destined goal, we shall fulfil our destiny… The world must feel the OYL wave.
Every focused entrepreneur should take advantage of the social media
Our products are primarily marketed on social media platforms such as facebook, twitter and most especially Instagram via our handle @oylsignature. We also have a webstore WWW.OYLSIGNATURE.COM, which is a very straight forward and easy-to-use transactional portal. All our payments are safely secure against fraudulent practices by PayStack, a Nigerian start-up that is currently breaking grounds in African e-commerce. I’ll like to proudly add that it was founded by two of my classmates from Babcock University. ‘Based on logistics’ we are currently able to deliver our products to the doorsteps of our customers in any part of the country, and we are hoping to start international deliveries in the first quarter of 2018.
Selling Nigerian urban fashion has not been easy
In a bid to aid our online marketing efforts, considering the fact that we do not currently run any physical OYL outlet (this is something we are seriously working on), we decided to ride the emerging ‘Pop Up Shop’ wave. Between 2016 and 2017, we must have showcased at over 25 pop-up events especially. The logic is simple. In order to build some sense of trust between the brand and potential customers, we felt it is important to put a physical presence to our products, you know, we had to show people this isn’t just some dubious scheme.
Plans for 2018
It is really about growth for us. In 2018 we plan to continuously expand our product range, improve our quality and customer service, and explore better and farther reaching marketing and distribution techniques. Most importantly we hope to build on the trust that Nigerians have put in the OYL Signature brand. A trust that has helped us move thousands of products to customers all over Nigeria; East, West, North, South, with less than three thousand followers on our instagram page, which has been our core marketing tool till date. We are grateful and we definitely do not plan to disappoint our growing community of supporters. Expect magic! See I had a personal experience recently that showed me that when we dream, all we need is believe to make it real. So thank you to all the believers in the OYL dream!
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