David Wej Archives – Martwayne

New YouTube Video: “How to Leave Paid Employment to Start Your Clothing Line – Lessons from David Wej” [A MUST-WATCH for Every Aspiring Fashion Designer!]

by T.Williams-A | Feb 15, 2016 | @martwayne, David Wej, Fashion, Fashion Beyond Stitches, How to Start a Fashion Business, Lesson from David Wej, Power Through Fashion, Start a Fashion Business

Hello good people!!!!!!! I BET you all had a fabulous Valentine’s Day!!!!! Please don’t ask me what I did yesterday. I can safely tell you that I did absolutely ZILCH for no reason at all! Sometimes, the best gift of all is the gift of sleep lol! 😀

SO! Today… the post title says it all! It has been a while since I posted anything relating to “Fashion Beyond Stitches”. I have been too busy hustling lol! But I thought today would be as good a time as any to post this looooong overdue video… and by long overdue, I mean this interview was done even before fashion talk! But since too many people have been resigning recently (Congratulations if you fall into those shoes :-D), I guess there’s no better time than now to post this video!

Screenshot from www.davidwej.com

I know quite a few people watched my last FBS video on “How I Made My Move from Accounting to Fashion”. If you did not watch it, you can watch it here:

How I Made My Move from Accounting to Fashion

BUT perhaps you were thinking, oh well, it was easy for you, you had no commitments! Now here is a man who also had a GREAT job, with a great salary who had a pregnant wife! If anyone had any reason whatsoever to hesitate, it was him! BUT that did not stop him!

Those who attended Fashion Talk, can tell you this man is brilliant! If you did attend, here is an extra freebie for you?! If you did not, then you need to get that CD if you have not already done so! He is simply amazing and extremely humble despite all the money he is raking in!

SO if you have also been considering taking the plunge and leaving your 9-5, hopefully his figures will give you that push you need! We are halfway through the 1st quarter of 2016 already so you need to get cracking on that list of 2016 Resolutions if you are really serious about breaking those boundaries!

A wise person told me just last week that the best time to start a new business is when there is a downturn in the economy. We all know how our economy is so now is a better time than ever to make this move! 😀

So without further ado, simply click on the link to access the video! Don’t forget to subscribe to the Martwayne Channel and follow us on Instagram (@martwayne) and Facebook, Google Plus & Twitter (@martwaynedotcom).

How to Leave Paid Employment to Start Your Clothing Line – Lessons from David Wej

Do leave your comments at the bottom of the video!

Cheers!

What Happened @ Fashion Talk on “Starting a Ready to Wear Line” on Saturday the 17th of October, 2015… :-D

by T.Williams-A | Oct 20, 2015 | @martwayne, David Wej, Fashion Business, Fashion Courses, Fashion Retail, Fashion School in Lagos, Fashion Talk, Power Through Fashion, Ready to Wear, Seye Amusa, Sola Babatunde, Tope Williams Adewunmi

Yes we had A BLAST at Fashion Talk on Saturday!!! Wow-wee!!! Honestly I could not have asked for a better turn out and event. The speakers were on point! We started on time! And we finished just as planned! In fact it was SUCH a good day people refused to take a lunch break! And I would say from the testimonials it was worth it!

So why did we decide to organise “Fashion Talk”?

Well… to be honest it was the first speaker, David Wej, who initiated it. We were having a chat a while back and he suggested coming to speak to Martwayne students about starting a ready to wear line. And naturally I jumped at the idea!

Not long after that, I started getting enquiries from people who were tired of the “made-to-measure” business model they were currently running and wanted to veer into ready to wear. So we decided to throw it open to others rather than just Martwayne students. And we got a whole lot of registrations.

And of course, it posed the opportunity to invite even more speakers and we had 3 speakers in total + me making 4 (though to be honest I did not do much speaking at all).

And in true Martwayne style, we started at 1 pm PROMPT like the sms stated (ok… I got on the stage like 1.05pm) but the 1st speaker started at 1.15 sharp as planned and he is a stickler for time.

This was taken around 1.15 pm and I really am thankful enough people came early. I’m sure they were as well! 😀

Meet the Speakers:

Here they are in the order in which they spoke.

😀 Need I introduce myself again… 😀 I did the hosting and the introductions

David Wej, fashion retailer extraordinaire…

Goodness! After listening to him speak, I tell you, retail is the way to go! He spoke on:

“Starting a Fashion Retail Business”

Seye Amusa… a very trusted trainer who KNOWS his stuff.

I tell you… if you want to move your business forward, you need this man!

He spoke about “Understanding Your Business Model”

(are you an ant, an elephant, a butterfly or a bumble bee…? :-D)

Mrs Sola Babatunde who definitely knows her stuff. A seasoned trainer who also runs a proper clothing production line as it should be run with the stages properly broken down into steps!

She spoke about “Running a Garment Production Unit”

Of course I already have a short YouTube clip on the event but let me make those who did not attend GREEN with envy with a few pictures of the testimonials!

Told you you’d be green! It really was a good one!

And of course, we launched the Martwayne advert on that day!

The response was awesome and I really thank EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO CAME!

Enjoy the video clip of the event! Just click on the link below the picture.

With my Martwayne Students! You guys rock! Love you all to BITS! 😀 😀 😀

Thank you so much for representing!

Fashion Talk 1 on “Starting a Ready to Wear Line”

Don’t forget to like and share it with your friends and please SUBSCRIBE to the Martwayne Channel! Mucho gracias! 😀

Lessons from the House of Deola Sagoe & Clan at the Business Side of Fashion Annual Symposium 2014 – The Legacy Edition

by T.Williams-A | Jan 19, 2015 | @martwayne, Bamitale Kevin-Agono, Business Side of Fashion, Clan, David Wej, Deola Sagoe, Fashion, Funmi Ayanbadejo, Ibikari Allwell-Brown, Kola Kuddus, MUDI, Patrick Ayanski, Teni Sagoe, Tewa Onasanya

Hello everyone!!! It is the 3rd week in January already (can you believe it?!) Looks like this year plans to fly by so quickly it will be overwhelming.

I’ll get started on a long overdue post that I am certain you will learn a lot from!

Now some of you may have heard of the Business Side of Fashion (BSOF) Annual Symposium. It takes place every year and is organised by the Fashion Management Agency run by Mrs. Bamitale Kevin-Agono.

I had attended about one or two of them previously but the Legacy Edition to me was THE BEST of the lot and a great way to wrap up the Symposium!

The BSOF Symposium was Tale’s initiative and her way of bringing industry experts to help budding fashion designers with their businesses. For her, “it was a zealous adventure with a motive to see if I could make a difference in the fashion industry“. And she sure did!

I recall the previous ones I attended had Mrs Nike Ogunlesi of Ruff N Tumble, Ituen Basi, Folake Folarin-Coker of Tiffany Amber, Lisa Folawiyo of Jewel By Lisa, Mai Atafo…. and even the Bank of Industry in attendance, sharing from their experiences and teaching the delegates about how to run a fashion business in Nigeria.

And the Legacy Edition of the BSOF Symposium was no different. First I was the host 😀 😀 😀 (haha…. yes I have to celebrate myself now n’est ce pas?!). Granted I had no clue what the host was required to do but I learnt quickly “on the job”.

And then we had the Keynote Speakers Mr. Clement Mudiaga Enajemo of MUDI Africa and Ms. Deola Sagoe of the House of Deola Sagoe. You guys have no clue how long I have wanted to meet these 2 people in person!

Images from: http://millarefashion.blogspot.com/2013/04/mudi-tale-of-artistic-expressions.html

http://theeagleonline.com.ng/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Deola-Sagoe.jpg

THEN there was the David Wej Competition where David Eweje of David Wej (another fashion guru who I totally respect in so many ways) handed out prizes to the winners of the Competition.

Followed by a Panel Talk by 3 industry leaders – Mrs. Funmi Ayanbadejo of Patrick Ayanski, Mr. Ibikari Alwell-Brown of Fetoru.com and Mrs. Tewa Onasanya of Exquisite Magazine (now called EM). Oh I learnt a lot from them, particularly in the area of e-commerce from Ibikari who used to Head the Fashion Units at Jumia and Konga.

And then the Grand Finale was (drumroll please…..) the lecture by the 2nd Keynote Speaker, Deola Sagoe. And I must say I was in total awe of her! Very soft-spoken, no airs whatsoever! Honestly, I just kept staring at her and remembering the first fashion show I attended where I saw her work! I love her and her work to bits!

Lucky for us, she also brought her daughter, Temi Sagoe of Clan and honestly, you guys have no clue how much she had to offer. Thankfully, I passed up on Tale’s offer to interview them and settled down to listen and learn… which was the best decision I ever made.

Funny…. as I listened to them, they both spoke a lot about what I have often spoken about in the past about the design process, pretty much what I teach my students and anyone who cares to listen.

For me, what was very enlightening was that despite the success of the House of Deola Sagoe and Clan, they still admitted they were making steps to expand and create a more profitable business. No stories of how they had hit it big, no “bobo” stories, nothing! No making the audience feel like they had “been there, done that”. Just plain hard facts!

Teni actually came prepared with a list of the different steps in the process with clear explanations on how you move from the design stage to the runway! It really was Fashion 101, taking each stage at a time with detailed explanations! It really was a “no holds barred” session.

Lucky for me – and you guys, I took some video clips but to be honest I edited a whole lot out of the clips! You can watch them on the “Martwayne” You Tube Channel at the following links and PS… don’t forget to Subscribe to the Channel [of course, I had to chip that in there :-D] – more videos coming up!

Now there are 5 different clips and it took ages for me to edit them but hopefully you can learn even if just a bit from them and hopefully use that knowledge to restructure your fashion businesses. I gave the different clips titles. You can click on the links to watch them. PS. Forgive some shaky parts in the video, I shot the clips with my phone and it was so not easy to keep my hands steady.

Part 1: Fashion is Serious Business!

Part 2: How the House of Deola Sagoe Started:

Part 3: How Clan Was Born:

Part 4: The Process at the House of Deola Sagoe:

Part 5: About Bespoke Clothing…:

Honestly, if you were not there, you missed a whole lot and I plan to rub your faces in it! Did I add that we got freebies from Patrick Ayanski and EM?! 😀

BUT! There is hope! Well… not regarding the freebies though… BUT

You can and SHOULD get the full DVD! These clips are nothing compared to the full DVD of an event which started at 8am and ended at 3pm. You can get the DVD by contacting the Fashion Management Agency @:

info@businesssideoffashion.com or 0810 337 9553

Honestly this will be like the best gift you can ever give yourself this year! I, for one, learnt a whole lot from Deola Sagoe & Clan and from Ibikari about e-commerce, which is a new area I have started to explore for myself. I am so glad I was a part of the event I tell you and I will also get the DVD for myself!

I can go on and on about this event but I will stop here. Sadly the Legacy Edition was the last of the BSOF Symposiums and it will no longer hold but you can still learn a lot from the Fashion Management Agency by registering for their Course – Fashion the Business which launched at their Fashion Business School.

And yes! I am one of the facilitators and I handle the creative aspects of fashion! 😀 The Course really does have a lot to offer including how to define your business, how to present your collection, how to position your brand, publicity and marketing and of course the accounting aspect of fashion!

For more details, do check out their site at www.fashionmanagementagency.com or call 0703 002 3333 or 0810 337 9553.

Now I’ll sign off here now and leave you to enjoy the pictures…