Zeldah Schrama: Setting up an African lingerie business with no fashion experience nor capital
Most people start a fashion line because of a passion for design or because they have some experience working in the industry. For me it went the other way around. Having lived in Europe for over 8 years, I can say that finding perfectly fitting and flattering fashion items when you’re endowed with curves is often a painful and difficult struggle.
While doing my MBA in 2014, I made this the topic of a feasibility study I did for my entrepreneurship class. After graduating, I decided to pursue the basic concept behind my initial business idea further, with a focus on lingerie. This focus was also a result of a personal experience, as I had just bought myself some beautiful African wax fabric before shopping for a bra. Then it hit me – the lack of color in lingerie! And to make it worse, lingerie that comes in my size and everything larger is simply not as beautiful and sexy as all the more petite sizes. Instead of buying my overpriced ill-fitting store bra, I went back home that day with the idea that I was going to make myself the perfect brand of panties. For weeks I did research and then worked out a business plan. I had to put those MBA skills to work. And so, Oh my bra was born, with the mindset to revolutionize the industry and the promise of bringing beautiful, African inspired lingerie to curvy girls everywhere. I quickly discovered that setting up your own business comes with a steep learning curve, as the process from idea to design and finally production is both complex and multi-layered, requiring huge amounts of prep time, effort, planning, enthusiasm and technical experience. From my experience so far, I have found that the key elements that are required to set up a lingerie company are:
Define your target customer
This may sound like a no-brainer, but if you don’t know who your target customer is, being attuned to everything she does, wants and thinks makes it very difficult to create the right brand messages. How old are they? What is their socio-economic status? Where do they buy their lingerie? Oh my bra is currently fine-tuning everything related to our target customer, so that once we begin our social media and marketing drives we are on point with what resonates with our customers. Also, this will help us in having a consistent vision across the board, from our product to marketing.
Find a great team to help build the company
At Oh my bra, our three woman team comes full circle from both a general and the experience perspective. Firstly, we all love vibrant African prints, as well as the cultures and people that wear them, and the idea of an African-inspired bra is something that we all find thoroughly exciting. Secondly, we are passionate about lingerie for curvy women because we have all experienced the pain of finding sexy lingerie that would actually fit our curvy bodies. Finally, each one of us brings their own excellent skills to the company, from operations and business management through technical design and supplier management to marketing and sales.
Implement your funding strategy from day one
I will admit that when I started working on my Oh my bra idea, I had no start-up capital at all. I had just finished my MBA and had no money to work with whatsoever. Even so, I did not let this get in the way. Instead, I decided to just forge ahead with the planning and execution of whatever part I could already take care of. Nevertheless, starting up a lingerie company is capital intensive and a lack of funding should be addressed right from the beginning. If there is one piece of advice I can give here, it is that a funding strategy should be drawn up from day one; from start-up competitions to government grants, and let's not forget the 4Fs; (1) Founder: which means using your own funds, whatever you got (2) Family: they look past the craziness of your business idea and give you money because they love you, (3) Friends: they will give you money because they trust you, and (4) Fools: these are wealthy people whom you may be able to inspire to fund your business at this stage, even though it might make little business sense?
Implementing your funding strategy early can help you set-up your business with greater ease and can ensure readiness for dealing with business angels and venture capitalists. At Oh my bra, however, we are trying to beat the odds. To do so, we’re participating in business plan competitions and start-up competitions across Europe and Africa and plan on skipping the 4Fs as much as we can, preferring to speak directly with business angels. Even so, we have, of course, invested some of our own money in our business. Still, thanks to our enthusiastic participation in business competitions, coupled to the effective use of modern IT, specifically crowd-funding and social media, we have not been forced to pour more of our private resources into this project than we might be able to realistically afford; which is, of course, a trap that many new entrepreneurs step in.
At any rate, Oh my bra was founded in August 2014. During this time I have come to know and learn a few things:
“Just do it.” What’s the worst that could happen?
Nike’s “Just do it” slogan is a simple yet very powerful phrase that propelled me to start my company. Every day I push myself by telling myself to just keep going, because, after all, what’s the worst that could happen? The aftermath of just do it and the feeling of accomplishment and recognition that comes with it is a very beautiful thing. Of course new challenges and obstacles will pop up all the time, but as with everything in life and indeed in business, there are always a myriad of solutions just waiting to be discovered and implemented. The key thing is to prioritize, make exceptions when called upon and keep the process moving along. So in the end, the best thing you can do is to just take the leap of faith, start building your dream, and see what happens next. I know that it can be a frightening experience to commit yourself like that, but, after all, what's the worst that could happen?
Lingerie is more technically tricky than it looks
Making good quality lingerie with perfect ‘fit’ requires an enormous amount of precision and expertise. These days, I tend to laugh at myself when I think back to the woman I was only a few months ago, who naively walked around proclaiming to lingerie designers and people in the industry: “How hard can it be to make a bra?” A few months later, I catch myself cursing at how challenging lingerie is and that, had I known this, I would probably have never gotten into the business. However, I cannot imagine myself doing anything else now. Every day is a challenge. Moreover, I Iove every minute of it and wouldn't trade it for anything.
Not everyone wants to do business with a start-up
One of the most surprising things I realized is that many people in the fashion/lingerie industry were not interested in doing business with a new company. I thought that, as a small independent business, suppliers and other companies in the value chain would be very excited by working with us purely because of the growth potential of young and innovative businesses. After numerous unanswered emails, phone-calls and rejections, I realized that many companies only want to work with larger, established companies, as they command higher order quantities and bring in lots more money than start-ups. This was a disappointing fact to learn, but thankfully, our aggressive negotiating and the enthusiastic telling of telling out story and aspirations led to the creation of valuable partnership with very supportive suppliers. These are the companies I look forward to form lasting and enduring relationships with.
Mine your network and network hard
Ask your network for help! There is always someone who is willing to lend a helping hand. At Oh my bra we have received a range of help from our personal networks; from the designing of our business cards by a contact in Florida to a former colleague acting as our Russian translator in our negotiations with potential business partners. Our legal advisor sits in Hong Kong, our IT go-to person is in Serbia, and some people we have worked with in the past have recommended us to potential and existing partners. It is amazing what you can achieve with the help of your network. And if your network is not as extensive, then you just have to network harder by attending as many industry events and events in general as you can, and also by pushing your existing network to meet many people as possible.
In the end, these are the lesson that I have learnt so far from my experience in setting up my own lingerie company. Even though my journey is not quite at an end yet, of course, as Oh my bra is set to launch its first collection later this year, and frankly, I can't wait to find out what new challenges I will face in between then and now, as I can guarantee there will be many. I can boldly state that becoming an entrepreneur has been a huge learning experience for me, a giant leap off the beaten track and straight into uncharted territory. Yes, it has been a nerve wracking experience at times, it has been frustrating and vexing and has given me a fair share of headaches, but at the same time, the experience has also forced me to grow into unexpected directions, to develop myself in ways I had never thought possible, and has opened my eyes onto possibilities that I had never even dared to imagine before. And all that, because I decided to just take the leap, and damn the circumstances.
Zeldah Schrama is Managing Director of African Lingerie Line Oh My Bra.
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