Omotola Olaniyi-Omosebi, a Nigerian fashion educator empowering others through training — Lionesses of Africa

What inspired you to start your company?

A few years ago, I struggled with how to cut and sew clothes, I didn’t know where to start from or where to learn the skills I needed. So I spent years looking for a solution to this problem from different places. I ended up wasting years learning little to nothing, I wasted money and time yet with nothing to show. On different occasions I would watch videos, read books and even attend sewing group tutorials all in the hope to learn. My sewing skills, interpretation of designs or perfect finishing was nothing to write-home-about. I became so confused, worried, scared and frustrated because I knew I was losing out, I didn’t believe in myself and my skills as I couldn’t sew anything meaningful for myself, not to talk of making clothes for clients. I spent a full year learning from a so-called ‘good’ tailor. But I knew if I could get hold of these skills it would help a great deal. I knew I needed a way out very fast because it was starting to affect my self-esteem; I didn’t like the fact that I was always asking my husband for every single kobo I needed. It was really bad. I finally found a way out. Today the story is different, as I not only do I sew well fitted garments, I also now help and teach other married women who are serious and desperate about learning how to sew and use this skill to generate more money, even if they are still doing their 9-5 jobs. In the month of May 2018, I opened a Fashion Training Academy where we help people, (married women our priority) solve these problems and we have trained over 300 women (boys and girls also included for summer classes) and still counting, We understand how difficult it is not to have a skill or source of income as a married woman as we know that there are no more full-housewives. (If you are married and you depend solely on your spouse for everything you are a Fool-housewife). So, this was the motivation and the push that gave birth to Gmoty Fashion Academy. Gmoty Fashion Academy Is a community that helps women find clarity and move very fast from being a full housewife to a resourceful housewife.

Why should anyone use your service or product?

 FOR THE ACADEMY

1. Our training techniques are tested and trusted. We do not just teach fashion, we also teach the business side of fashion. This is where we bring in experts from the industry to train and educate our students on selling and branding etc. We train them and we give them their first job.

2. We pride ourselves in giving the best, we connect our students with Professional Fashion Associations, Fashion Incubation Hubs, to accelerate their fashion careers.

They don’t need to have a shop/space to start their fashion career, we have a partnership with Fashion Incubation Hub in Lagos. Even if the students do not have money to start off, they can go to the hub to produce and sell. The Hub is equipped with machines and machinist, photographers for their photo-shoot, E- commerce for their products and many more people to help their fashion career, just because they trained at GFSA. They don’t need to wait until they have shops or buy a lot of machines, because of our partnership they have access to a lot of resources at the hub and can start their fashion career without the burden of how I had to navigate mine.

3. We also teach our students how to use the latest tech tools to promote their products and services.

4. We always organize fireside chats where we bring professionals for them to answer questions on how to start, scale and build a sustainable fashion business.

5. We have a conducive training facility where we train interested individuals especially women, girls, and young adults.

FOR OUR PRODUCTION HUB

We produce high quality craft and garments. We always have the end users in mind when producing our pieces. Our products are timeless. Our hand crafted products are specially made by our best students who now work and earn from what we produce and sell. (Laptop Bags, Neck Pillows and Accessories)