Recently, the body co-ordinating the fashion industry in Nigeria, received very special visitors. They came all the way from Washington DC, USA, and they were interested in how to support the fashion industry in Nigeria.
It was an occasion to share lots of ideas and at the end of the epoch making meeting at the National Arts Theatre in Lagos, FADAN had good news to share and to celebrate. FADAN now has a working partner in the World Bank.
Below is are the challenges that FADAN put forward to the visiting team.
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| Leading the FADAN team, Mrs Funmi Ajila-Ladipo shares important note with the visitors |
CHALLENGES OF THE FASHION INDUSTRY IN NIGERIA
As an emerging industry, Nigeria’s fashion industry
should be a determining factor in our economy and for this to happen we need to
clearly understand how it can work.
The structure of the fashion industry is centered around
the designers, as there will be no fashion industry without them. Everything
else like models, modelling agencies, tailors, fashion photographers,
fashion schools, fashion retailers, fashion magazines are
built around them.Fashion designers however make different categories of
clothes, there are mainly three categories but it can be broken down into more
parts, but the three main ones are Haute Couture, Prêt a Porter (ready- to -wear) and High Street fashion.
FUNDING
This is one
of the biggest challenges faced by the fashion industry in Nigeria today.
It has
become obvious that the government would rather fund other projects where they
believe they can yield the most revenue, than the fashion industry which they
do not believe is pertinent. Furthermore, private organizations and individuals
are hesitant to sink money in business they too believe they cannot profit
from. Therefore, the fashion industry is left funded by the few affluent
individuals with the passion for designing, or those that can afford to give
out to aspiring designers. The number of these people willing to give are few
in comparison to what can be innovatively done in the fashion industry in
Nigeria.
The
government does give few grants to the industry, but these are poorly
publicized. In all, the lack of fund leads to low productivity in all aspects
of the fashion design industry in Nigeria. It is to be understood that the
fashion industry is like a machinery, complete with little and big parts (such
as fashion media, retail hubs, production, etc) that operate in synchronization
and it just cannot work seamlessly without adequate funding.
LACK
OF SKILLED LABOUR
This another
problem of the fashion industry in Nigeria. It can be noted that there are over
a hundred and one people who own a sewing machine in a store compartment and
advertise their professionalism in a business that in real sense are terrible
at doing. These people have ruined the concept of ‘fashion design’. There are
series of relatable pictures which have broken the internet showing an outfit
one gives a ‘tailor’ to make and a very poor result as the final turn out. It
is safe to say that there are a lot of people flaunting their machines with
magazines on styles they cannot reproduce. Fashion design, to be candid, is
more than dubbing a style off a magazine. But, if you cannot dub a style
perfectly off a magazine, what are the chances you can make up a captivating
style of your own?
The number
of people offering service on fashion designing are unfortunately a lot more
than those who have truly passionate and capable of offering these services.
This leads to a situation where the industry is not taken as seriously as it
should.
RETAIL HUB
For a country with an estimated population of 155 million, the demand for
fashion goods is not commensurate with the available supply and Nigerians spend
a fortune trying to make up for it on the international fashion scene. This
probably explains why the Lagos – London route is one of the most commercial
routes for both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic in the world. It also shows that the existence of so
many street style, front retail stores/shops/boutiques does not equate to
having an adequate and functioning retail environment. The fashion retail
business is so much more than this and can function through many avenues such
as the high street, department stores, boutiques, concession stores,
e-commerce, pop up stores etc. What
percentage of this do we have in Nigeria at the moment? As long as the diverse fashion needs of
the people can not be met by what prevails in the retail industry, fashion
retail as we know it, will have little or nothing to contribute to the economic
growth of the nation and will always be relegated to the background as a sector
with little or no importance.On the other hand, the fashion industry is
not strong enough to do anything on its own so Nigeria
as a nation must rise up and make a decision to establish a proper retail
industry through the support of Nigerian designers, which can in turn encourage
foreign direct investment in the fashion industry as long as there is stability
in government and its policies.
PRODUCTION HUB
On a basic
level, Nigeria’s Textile and Clothing supply chain works in five straight
forward methods. First, producers [agricultural] of raw materials, in this case
cotton, grow cotton. Next, they gin the cotton. Third, they sell the cotton to
the fabric designers. At this stage is where fabric production occurs as the
designers spin yarns, weave, knit, dye, print and finish fabrics. In the
Western fashion supply chain, at this stage, auxiliary services such as
advertising and promotion are undertaken to actively promote the designed
fabrics. Nigeria’s fabric designers have no such luxury. After fabric
design/production, comes the fourth step which is fashion design/production.
Here, Nigerian fashion designers purchase the designed fabrics which they then
cut, trim and make into designs.
The fifth
and final step in the supply chain is exporting and retailing of finished
goods. In the West, once designs are produced, they are showcased in showrooms
in major markets allowing fashion buyers the opportunity to check and purchase
for their retail stores: department, chain, specialty or discount. In contrast,
in Nigeria, 99% of fashion designers retail directly to their clientele. There
are no retail giants, specialty, chain or discount stores. In the past five
years, there has been an emergence of design boutiques. For the most part,
however, these boutiques are designer owned. For instance, MOMO, Deola Sagoe
and Tiffany Amber own their own boutiques. For boutiques that might be
synonymous with Western ones i.e. non-designer owned, they stock primarily
foreign designs from Europe, Italy being a favorite. Further, for the Nigerian
designer, retailing to market women in Oshodi, for example, is not an option as
the designs are simply unaffordable by the average Nigerian woman.
POWER
Power in
Nigeria is a huge challenge for most industries including the fashion industry.
The costs of fueling generators overweigh the retail prices of the piece of
clothing or material to be sold. However due to this major challenge, fashion
designers have to run generators for a long period of time thereby spending
excess money on fuel and slows down the production hub. In cases like fuel
scarcity and erratic supply of
electricity by the government a fashion designer doesn’t want to be found
wanting in delivering his/her product. Power is one major aspect that should be
looked intoas it has seriously limited the potential for growth in the fashion
industry.
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
There is the need for government to support the fashion value chain through
policy and legal framework to help create jobs.National
Intellectual Property Offices should be continually strengthened in order to
establish effective synergies with various ministries and government agencies,
such as the Ministries of Trade and Industry and Culture and Tourism, in
formulating national policies incorporating the fashion design industry. The
lack of cross border cooperation between industry associations in the African
countries should be addressed by establishing cross-border IP licensing
platforms. Governments can be instrumental in facilitating and supporting these
types of industry initiatives. Training seminars on the value-added benefits of
in the fashion industry and on the filing and registration procedures of rights that are of great relevance to fashion
designs should be organized. Also, government incentives such as preferential
credit schemes to women fashion designers can enable gender empowerment in the
fashion trade by incentivizing the use of IP as a form of collateral.
This is very true I love it!
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