Guide To Starting Fashion And Tailoring Business Material In Nigeria (2018-2019)
Fashion designing and tailoring businesses have now become the order of the day in Nigeria as most Nigerian female graduates are converting into this business. Fashion designing and tailoring involve dealing in all kinds of fashion designers as well as making dresses in diverse patterns.
I knew one of the graduates of the University of Ibadan who studied B.Sc Mathematics and graduated only to convert into fashion designing and tailoring in Abuja. She learned this business during her Youth Service months in Abuja and has now become a fashion designer and a tailor to the core. She has personally made a lot of nice dresses, ready-made gowns, native dresses and lots more.
Ever before most Nigerians started becoming entrepreneurs, no graduate ever moved near fashion designing or tailoring. Most people thought it’s such a business that is meant for the illiterates. Everybody believed that the business was meant for those who didn’t go to school at all or those who partially went to school but didn’t go beyond the school certificate level.
In this article, we shall discuss starting a fashion designing and tailoring business in Nigeria through the following sub-headings:
- How to Start a Tailoring Business in Nigeria
- Tailoring Material Business
- How to be a Good Tailor in Nigeria
- How to Start Tailoring Material Businesses
- Is Tailoring Material Business Profitable
How to Start a Tailoring Business in Nigeria
The idea of starting a tailoring business in Nigeria and how to go about this is not a strange thing to the people at all. It’s a common business everybody is already used to around.
In starting a tailoring business in Nigeria, you need to learn how to use the sewing machine, the weaving machine and other necessary equipment used to make dresses.
The following are the basic steps to be followed while preparing to start a tailoring business in Nigeria:
- Register with a fashion designer in your street or elsewhere: Without jumping the protocols of the tailoring union/association, you must get a certificate to practice as a tailor and the only way to get this is to register as a learner under an experienced and certified tailor for a certain period of time after which you’ll become certified too. This is when you can only be allowed to practice as a tailor.
- Rent a shop to start your own personal tailoring business: After you have become duly certified as a tailor under a professional tailor, you are then free to start your own business. The next step is to get a shop in a strategic way so you can get known on time. You don’t have to hide yourself from where a lot of people will quickly find you. You should rather choose a location that is excellent for such a business.
- Buy the tailoring equipment and other necessary materials: This is how you’ll really show the potential customers that you’re serious about your business and you have what it takes to help anyone make any style of dresses. Once they start coming to check on you right in your shop, and they begin to see that your shop is well equipped and loaded with fashion designing and tailoring materials, they won’t hesitate patronizing you from time to time.
- Attract customers: To really become a successful fashion designer, you must learn the strategy with which you can attract customers. Once you have this strategy, success is guaranteed.
Tailoring Material Business In Nigeria
The tailoring material business involves the selling of those materials needed to make fashioned dresses such as needles, wool, electric iron, wooden tables, as well as other similar materials. There are people who deal in this business without tailoring at all. They do nothing but sell the tailoring materials, whereas, there are so many tailors and fashion designers who equally do their tailoring business and sell those materials at the same time.
The level of your profit determines how exposed you are to the people who need those things. So, if your shop is situated in a location where a lot of people can easily find you, you will sell tailoring materials and prosper.
How to be a Good Tailor in Nigeria
Being a good tailor entails learning adequately under a professional. If you didn’t learn tailoring properly and adequately, you won’t be known as a professional because your work will never look professional to those customers, and you may eventually lose a good number of them.
While learning tailoring, do that with full concentration so that all you see and learn become yours in the nearest future. Be focused and never forget the primary purpose for which you came into tailoring. You want to make a difference, right? Never forget this goal and remain focused so you can become successful.
Becoming a good tailor does not rest with learning adequately alone though; you need to learn how to possess customer relations while dealing with those who patronize you at one time or the other.
People love to be appreciated and they will choose to continue patronizing you the moment they find this character in you.
Many tailors have lost hundreds of potential customers due to the fact that didn’t possess customer relations. They didn’t have the good characters that will impress and motivate good and promising customers, so they will continue to lose more potential customers.
How to Start Tailoring Material Businesses
Starting a tailoring material business is as easy as getting the necessary info about the business from those who have been there for so long. Things you’ll need to make findings about while getting the info include:
- The type of location suitable for such a business
- Where to order the tailoring materials from
- Ideas about the costs involved in ordering materials
- Information about the wholesalers or manufacturers of those materials
- How to resell and profit profusely
Is Tailoring Material Business Profitable?
By getting connected to sellers and dealers of tailoring materials near and far, you can easily figure out if this business is profitable or not.
It’s not normal to just incur expenses on a business that you know nothing about neither is it good to rush into a business without finding out the selling and profit potentials.
From my own personal experience, tailoring material business is highly profitable provided you are located where people can quickly find you.
