By Creative Director Ankara Africa, Theresa Odey
The most powerful element concerning any idea is the passion that accompanies it. Within the concept of interaction, passion is the feeling that drives every idea and dream to reality. And when your passionate appeal is identified, you will realize that every other step towards achieving it flows naturally. You will soon realize that you are getting better at it than others. The increasing enthusiasm you feel is your passionate appease and that passion makes you come back for more, thereby increasing and improving your iconic skills and compounding your strengths for competitive advantage within a particular market or sector. For Theresa Odey, her passion and creativity ideas are two fundamental elements that drives her motivation within the fashion design sub-sector. Starting a clothing business is a great way to turn her skills and creative ideas into an iconic career path. As the creative director of her popular brand called ‘Ankara Africa’, which haven been officially launched in 2017 has been poised for greater heights. The able to do a relaunch of other collection within the Ankara line of fashion called the ‘Julie’s Ankara collections 2019’ and the ‘BM Ankara collections in the year 2020’.
For Ankara Africa, her passion and motivation for fashion has led the starting stone into the fashion and style industry which has been a great way of turning her in-built skills and creativities into an iconic brand of wonderful designs.
Fashion design is one of the fastest growing sub-sectors within the Nigerian economy and by extension the world at large. In Nigeria, its emergence, development and growth are on an increase with new entrants coming into the sub-sector on a daily basis. Fashion designing is experiencing an increased influx of people who want to purchase well-tailored clothes that satisfies their demands and requirements. Ankara Africa having studied the fashion market has been able to produce Ankara made traditional wears for specified occasions and for specific individual requirements.
The large and competitive demands and its impact on fashion business in Nigeria is setting a strong business trend leading to the creation of a new fashion store at every street corner almost every day across many states and cities. Generally, the taste for good fashion designs has increased the number of fashion outlets in recent times both within and outside Nigeria. Thus, making fashion the new life, communication, development, the new norms and values. Fashion and style has now become a business venture that accommodates the youths, adults, men, and women. In as much as you can replicate your creative imaginations into real life scenarios that are well communicated to the generality of everyone who has a keen interest.
Fashion business revolves around creativity, efficiency, uniqueness and it gives no room for laziness. The only word that is recurrent in the fashion world is creativity. if a brand is to stay alive and compete for space and markets, a lot is expected. Ankara Africa as a unique and well thought out brand has been able to introduce well designed products currently on demand in the market such as: dresses, Ankara shoes, bags, hats, Fascinators, hair bands, Umbrellas, Bridal fans. No wonder, its mission statement says it all. As an iconic brand, its designs are dedicated to providing qualitative long-lasting products to the taste of her customers. Its vision also is a pointer that in the world of Ankara clothing collections, the brand will provide the best-value products and services to global customers of all cultures, traditions and age grades.
In this 21st century, where every segment of the society is judged according to their appearances and most of the time it is done hastily, consciously or unconsciously. Social responses to events are the first impression an individual gets from his or appearances in any public event. And these are choices made by an individual according to their abilities and capabilities. Therefore, it has become imperative that clothing has become a way of communication now occupies a central position in fashion designing. This also goes on to suggest how people are viewed, and ranked according to their social status, culture and gender solely because of their dress sense.
One of the fastest ways of getting hold of the fashion market or becoming a successful entrepreneur is to carved a niche for one’s design line. Carving a niche is a necessary industry requirement that helps an emerging entrepreneur in any sub-sector to succeed. In other words, it is a pre-conceive ideas about your choosing area of specialization which are your type and line of products brands and services and by extension your sales and marketing strategies. As the originator of the idea, you need to ask yourself some key and salient questions: are you passionate about this idea, are these products already available in the market and how often do people demand for these products. Ankara Africa’s BM’s Ankara collections is a way of picking and sticking to its strengths of producing Ankara branded clothing materials, shoes, bags, bridal fans, hats, hair bands, umbrellas.
In venturing into its Ankara brands, Ankara Africa haven realized its potential is now a specialist for making Ankara designs. Many of its designs if not all have literally translated into a self-fulfilling success. These iconic designs have helped Ankara Africa take full advantage of the opportunities available within the fashion industry coupled with the high level of consistencies it has maintained in recent time. This has helped its latest collection ‘BM’s Ankara collection’ provides high quality styles that are long lasting and satisfies the best and latest tastes of its customers.
For Ankara Africa, starting a clothing business is a very personal journey and decision. It is a sub-sector with huge potentials for exploitation. There is a gap of Ankara clothing and Ankara collections such as Ankara dresses, shoes, bags, hats, bridal fans that is why it did a relaunch another collection of Ankara designs which are of a higher quality and trending styles under the BM’S Ankara collection. These were unique designs in their making that satisfies the potentials for special events for clients such as weddings, gifts items, personal event requests and so on.
Ankara Africa having a clear understanding of the fashion market demands and trends has been able to conveniently through its creativity and strategies has helped in capturing the Ankara market through a target audience who are mostly the lovers of Ankara clothing and other Ankara made clothing accessories. This has enabled its brand to be more strategically focused in building an internationally recognized brand, which is now an emerging fashion trends among Africans.
In marketing its designs, Ankara Africa’s adopted marketing plan is a lesson for both old and new players in the industry. It may sound over ambitious looking at when Ankara Africa was launched into the fashion market in Nigeria, but the journey so far is worthy of commendation. Haven identified Ankara designs with all its complementing accessories and keeping in mind the current market trends and having realized that the industry is highly competitive, marketing BM’s Ankara collection wasn’t a challenge with the lessons learned from Julie’s Ankara collection in 2019, the marketing plan and penetration for BM’s collection was a major hit for its brand and collection. Ankara Africa’s has successfully moved up in ranking from an emerging design to been a major player all thank to its strong committed strategies. It has aggressively pursued a well mapped out marketing environment and the available competitors/threats, modern design distribution channels, marketing surveys and feed backs, sales and advertising mediums such as social media and a budget spending on purchases.
Ankara Africa has been maintaining a simple approach to its designs this has served as a way of making sure little misconceptions such as brand name pronunciation and spellings does not deter potential customers from patronizing its designs. One of the great lessons learned about its designs is to create a brand name, logo slogan that people can easily relate to and to this end, identifying Ankara Africa from others through is pretty easy. Michinov and Michinoc (2011) states that ‘people who have the same dress and taste for fashion often have a contagious effect on each other than those who dress differently from one another’. In a more fashion cautious society, where there is more social disunity and disintegration, people who dress alike are more likely to interact more. When distracted about which brands satisfies your taste, think of Ankara Africa. Remember the words of Maya Angelou: People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Theresa Odey’s visionary goal which has since saw Ankara Africa grow into a global brand within in a short period of time because of her commitment self and societal developments has left many within the industry in awe. Many fashion enthusiasts now dress better and appreciate Ankara styles. While also serving as a tool where people’s lives can be affected positively. Helping you to dress well through Ankara designs is Ankara Africa’s core calling, I also strongly believe that if you dress well, you look good, and if you look good, you feel good and when you feel good, you worry less, and the less you worry the more you are able to stay motivated and focused on your goals pursuit and by so doing you are able to live a more fulfilling and successful life.
