Wilson Onyilokwu, a tailor turned designer and monogramming specialist for schools and other personal brands, shares his story in this interview with Ojochenemi Priscillia.
What inspired you to start up this business?
I did not start it at first. I had a family member who was already making sweaters and cardigans for schools and she had someone who would assist her with the monograming of such wears after she was done making them but she experienced delay, a lack of consistency with him and also realized that he was not organized. Therefore, she decided to get the monogram machine herself. Then shortly after, I came to Lagos and started working first before taking over management in 2017 and in 2020, I fully took over the business. I was actually into sewing of uniforms too but I decided to focus fully on Monograming,
Do you have exclusive contracts with schools or do you work with multiple schools simultaneously?
Well, I work with multiple schools. I do have some schools that I have a contract with and a few of them, It’s been years now since we started working with them and it’s been nine years since we started working with one of those schools. Because we have a contract with them, individual parents cannot bring uniforms to us, it has to be the management. Then there are many other schools we do not have a contract with.
Can you share the percentage of commission you have with those schools?
What we do is, we have a pricing system for schools and we extend this same pricing system to tailors. Somehow, some of these schools have to go around making these uniforms, which is usually expensive, and we have a way of giving an incentive of 15% to these schools. Therefore, the school gets to lower the cost of their uniforms. Then the quantity of uniforms brought to us by these schools determines how much, or how many times these schools get the incentive. However, we only do that for a few schools.
Can you share your experiences?
I will talk about the experiences first. Working here, especially in Lagos, taught me a lot about being an Entrepreneur. There was a time when we worked 20 hours a day; we had 2 shifts and only 4 hours to rest. That helped me manage the time I had until we broke even and had a single shift a day and then, we tried as much as possible to meet up.
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That also helped me schedule. I learned how to schedule jobs. Someone does not just walk in and say, oh, we have something to do. You have to place everybody in a queue. It is a first-come, first-served basis. This really gave me practical experience on how to run an entrepreneurial business. Most importantly, how to run a production facility because I refer to this place as a factory since we produce here. Therefore, that has been my best experience here
Are there any challenges you face in this line of work?
The biggest challenge we face in this business now is the economy because you get to a stage where things get expensive. Your production materials get expensive. There is only that certain level you could be within your reach. You cannot be insensitive to your customers. Yes, they are going through the same thing we experience especially with the increase in the price of fuel. I mean, we need electricity for at least 4 to 5 hours a day to make production possible and this involves us getting fuel. They are also buying products that are expensive so naturally, we should be sensitive towards them but there has to be a limit. There are times when the schools complain about how we charge them and there is nothing we can do to stop it from happening. This most times leads us to only making 25-30% profit. Therefore, the biggest challenge is the economy.
How have you been able to cope with the economy and every other concern?
Well, it has been tough but I think one of the major ways of being able to scale through is being able to understand that things change. Like, two weeks ago when there was this fuel scarcity announcement. I was able to get fuel for 1,200 Naira per litre and I had to buy 25 litres. Now it is lower. I bought for 910 per litre last week.
The challenge here is how are we going to cope with this? For the week I bought fuel at 1,200 per litre, someone who is in my line of work might increase his or her price rate, which can lead to loss of customers. Once you lose customers, you hope new customers come in and pay the new price. Then, in this business, your customers are not just the people walking through the door. Your customers are the people who have not heard about you yet, they are those who will hear about you from people you have already worked with before. In my own case, I do everything possible to keep the customers that I have. Even if I have to spend a few more months denying myself of extra profits.