Orí Adé; The journey and the future.

How does your work change the arts/design space? 

 

We have been able to protect the traditional knitting techniques from the encroachment of middle eastern embroidery patterns flooding our society while also elevating the African Man’s sartorial look.

Our work has created a new product category that wasn’t there just 4 years ago. With profound impact in helping super talented knitters amplify their skills to the right target audience, generating ideas and offering insights on customer needs.

 

What are the major challenges your work hopes to achieve?

 we want to develop systems that enhance our buyer experience by providing seamless process between our design team and knitting unit for made on order items. A more robust feedback subsystem that can handle thousands of queries from customers and give coherent, and concise responses in the shortest possible time thereby improving our customer service.  

We hope to preserve the artistic craftsmanship and promoting the traditional artistry and craftsmanship involved in making the Ori Adé hats, as they are often intricate and detailed work of art. 

We want to expand the culture of handknit Nigerian hats and keeping our local communities active and rewarded for years to come. There are over 60million Yoruba people globally. In the USA, they sell over 42 million baseball caps yearly. We want to spread the knowledge of handknit caps to every continent and make even versatile styles with same original trans-generational Nigerian knitting techniques 

We just launched our handknit Agbada service (Jakan) which has been a tremendous success since the silent lunch. 

What should you take from our story/journey? 

 Our journey has been growth focused and we have more long term plans than short term. For any creative product you wish to showcase to the world you need to set long term goals. 

What’s the one thing the audience can connect to in your story? 

Orignality of our products and resilience of I and the team. We have to do more for country as citizens. We need to be more involved in what our country and her space becomes and not leave it to the government only. You have to be razor sharp in your mind before the world would accept your products. The last few years, we have had to solve some problems with training our knitters on communication, and respect for timelines. They form the bedrock of the culture we are trying to create. 

What’s your most challenging part of the business? 

Dealing with knitters in multiple towns across the southwest is most definitely the most challenging part of the business. It has a very heavy impact on our customer service delivery. We have invested more in helping our knitters become more reliable. We have also created a culture with better communication within the team. When we started we had knitters that would turn of their data for days saying it is too expensive to leave it on. This communication gap in turn affects service delivery and being unable to meet timelines.  I think we need the Telcos to come together and provide affordable unlimited data at a reasonable price to people in the rural areas. 

 Tell us a bit more about your brand and how you started? 

I have always been fascinated by meanings of each design on a cap. Our best seller is called owó tó owó (hand-in-hand). I have always told people around me they are the finest Nigerian caps. The intricate designs, patience with knitting process and all. I wear them a lot. My friends would ask me to get for them. The first I sold was over 10 years ago. In 2019, computerized embroidery machine was becoming a norm amongst some elite Nigerian kaftan and Agbada brand. It was definitely going to kill the handknit embroidery if we didn’t act. To protect it, we started a Men’s Nigerian cap brand with the best selection available anywhere. In Nigeria, you would only find brand focused on Hausa caps and igbo caps. They were mostly produced as ready to wear. This makes it easy to sell. We started with made on order until we opened the first Yoruba cap store in Lagos. 

  

From team of 3 people in 2019 to 13 people as full time engaged staffs and partners in multiple locations today. Administrative and operations office in Ibadan, brand experience centre in Lagos. We say a big thank you to everyone that has supported us till this point. We are earnestly looking forward to the future has we introduce new product categories and bring new people on board to help take the company forward. 

 Thank you 

OA