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How would you assess the apparel or garment industry in Nigeria?

Do we have one? (laughter).

We have the making of one and it is very very underdeveloped and nobody, none of the banks can loan you money to let you grow to the size that you become competitive globally. The garment industry globally is a highly competitive one. And it has been so fine-tuned, with the use of modern technology that to be competitive in that industry, you have to know about laser jet cutting; cutting 10,000 garments in one go, having factories that produce 1,000 units a day.

The nearest we have come to that in Nigeria is in the plastic industry that would produce 10,000 plastic containers a day . But where clothes are concerned, it is pretty underdeveloped in Nigeria. However, there is a possibility for great growth because the labour is there. But the labour is a bit undisciplined, you have to harness them, you have to train them, you have to make them understand that this is an industry setting, and not a workshop where the oga sits down, drinking his garri and a tailor sows one cloth and stops. No, in factory setting, it does not work like that. You have to make X number of units per day. You cannot but come to work. Those are the kind of problems you face in the industry with undiscilined labour force.

But I believe that can be dealt with. You can manage it, you can train them, pay them well, give them all kinds of benefits and let them see that working in a structured environment is to their benefit.

Given this scenario what can be done to develop the garment industry?

To develop it, what I would recommend is to invite the Indonesians or the Chinese to help us with the development of the industry. They by far have the cheapest, most efficient technology for producing, vast number of clothes at the minimum price levels. Because they deal a lot with the americans and the size of the American market has enabled them over the years to fine-tune their processes.

So I would invite them to come and show us how they would set up and run that industry here. Another thing is that textile manufacturers themselves have to start manufacturing, fabrics that can be used to make shirts, trousers, jeans, Gabadin, Chinos and copy for shirts, T-shirts, not just polyester. They have to make fabrics that can be used to set up an industry here. But the most important is the ability to compete favourably with what is coming in from the far east.

At what level would you invite the Chinese and Indonesians to come in?

At the level of training and management. May be a situation where you have technical assistance. That is the level I would want them to come in because, they really have mastered the art of mass producing clothes at the cheapest possible price. So, I would say invite them to come and train and go back. We don't want them to stay.

Would you want them to come in under the auspices of the government, just like Nigerian government sends out technical aid corps to other countries?

Not at the governmental level, I believe that too many things are left to the government. We have to take up this things. Private enterprises have to grow Nigeria. We have to stop pointing at the government. Who are the government? We are the government, we keep forgeting that we are in a democratic dispensation, where it is the government of the people, by the people for the people. Government is not some isolated being that should be carrying us like an isolated little baby. It is time the private enterprise forced the government to create the enabling environment. For economic growth, an environment that creates jobs for the millions of unemployed Nigerians. We the private sector, have to let the government know what we need. The government cannot be making policies in isolation.

You talked about training, as if it is the only problem of the industry, what of machineries? Do you have a machine that can make 10,000 clothes per day?

You are talking about 300 or 400 workers. (Laughter), a lot of workers. You need the human resource element. People who can manage people, we need the technical expertise, a laserjet cutting table, cannot work with NEPA going up and down, You need a huge generator. Why? You shouldn't need all those things. But it is not only training as in training the tailors, that is something we can do ourselves. It is training in terms of understanding the way the industry works. The way you can maximise the corporate pie from your production. If the machines breakdown, are you going to call the Indonesians to come and do it? No. We have to train our own people to operate those machines and fix them if anything goes wrong with it. So, it is largely on technical assistance, technical basis, what I have in mind.

Let's talk about Ruff 'n' Tumble, are you designing only clothes that make people rough and tumble or what?

The idea of the name came from the playful spirit that children have. Children by nature are very playful. No matter what you dress them with, it can be a king's robe, that child is going to play and jump about and tumble in it. That child will hop around, jump around and play. That is just the way children are. So it is born out of the very nature of the children. Incidentally, no consulting firm helped us with the name. It was myself and my neighbour at a time. Two housewives with babies. We were talking about her bazaar, I was going to her bazaar and she said: what are you going to call your stand. What kind of clothes are you even making? And I said oh, clothes children can play around in, rough around in and tumble in. So, this name was actually formed by two women, outside her kitchen door. No Accenture,consulting firm was hired to coin the name.

One would have thought that the name is actually a concept which you are propagating in the industry as a whole?

Believe me, at a point in time when I started this business, I was not looking that far ahead until things began to change, I began to see a lot more potential than I had anticipated. There was no business plan, there was no feasibility study, I was just a person with a very strong desire, to pursue a dream and that was to make the best clothes, made in Nigeria, not even the children. I stumbled on the children's clothing by accident, I was looking for clothes for my children and I could not find them. So, I decided that I will make some for them. From there I got orders and from there a business was born. There was no business plan.

How long ago did this happen?

That actually happened in 1986 but all those early years when I was selling from the back of my car, I was selling at bazaar. Everywhere, there was a bazaar, I was there, my table and my suit case, my children and sometimes even my husband. So it all started then. But it was when we decided to take this building (23 Isaac John Street Ikeja GRA) to remove ourselves from the chaos in the industry and build a corporate image for ourselves. The name still the same but somewhere along the line, we added some few more colours to the logo and gave it a more corporate image. I then started taking courses; I started learning about branding, strategy, and all these different things from Lagos Business School (LBS). And it was from there that I realised that I was sitting on a huge opportunity. It was now time to put a strategy to all these different direction, all these things that was going on. And then take it from there. So that really started about three years ago. This is our third year and we are celebrating our anniversary this year. For the first time, we decided to give back a little more. We are working with a company in Nigeria to send children on holidays in England. We are giving one Nigerian child (of course, we can give more than one) the chance of spending a holiday in a camp in England. Camp Bomatly England. Again, it sets us apart from the crowd. It reconfirms our commitment to what we are doing. It is not a one year stuff but a lifetme commitment. So that promotion is going on right now and it would end on July 21, 2002, and we will have a huge party to as many children, that gets our invitation. All the children that buy from us that helped us to get to where we are, and the families actually because the children do not come by themselves. They come with their parents.

Beyond what you have said, what else attracted you to the business?

Nothing.

Are you saying you are in the business for altruistic reasons and not profit motive?

What profit motive. I was selling clothes for N950 and N1,200. the desire to make clothes initially outweighed the desire for money. Money was not the motive. The motive was to make something that is solely Nigerian, that could be branded as a Nigerian product. If I thought of money, we would not spend as much as we have spent, maintaining our corporate image.

Even if you did, was it not about brand building?

That's why I said we arenot in for the short haul, we are in for the long hall.

Why did you focus on children because I can't see any adult size?

Yes, you will not find anything for an adult here. The reason is simply because I believe that in everything that you do, you shouldhave a focus. I do the design all the clothes that are manufactured under the Ruff 'n' Tumble label, it was not possible for me to design for children and at the same time design for adult.

Really, I felt we have gone into a new terrain. We needed to sharpen our skills, we needed to get our structures in place, we needed to get our processes correct. We needed to get our processes functioned. So I said, let's grow this line and grow it well. When it is up acepted and available, then we can do something else. But for now, Ruff 'n' Tumble today are the children's brand. If we do go into adult designs, it would not be Ruff 'n' Tumble, it would be a completely new label altogether.

How big is your vision?

Oh ... as big as I cannot see the end of it. But it is more and strategic, because I don't believe in flapping things up and down. I believe in proceeding gradually. What we are dealing with is based on top quality. The quality I believe is very high. The skill of the manufacturers, very high. Of course, it has to be high. You cannot just pick trained people, you come to train people and it takes time to train people. When you have trained them, you make them understand the vision of your company. You have to build our organisation where the people are committed. Imagine, we have a factory and we have 200 workers and they decided to walk off, what would happen? The business will crumble. So,, a lot of people that are actually the tailors are not educated. You need to take time to explain a lot of things to them. You need to explain to them, the culture that we are building, the dreams and goals of the organisation. It can be very tiring but you have to keep going. You have to be relentless so for me I prefer that we do it that way. We now have a distributor in GRA Port Harcourt. We are looking for somebody in Abuja now. We can find. We have already started advertising. We have started putting in enquiries. But you have to worry can they pay the fees, the licensing fee, can they pay. So many things that are involved, we are not taking just anybody. We want to be careful about who we pick. We have to be represented the way Ruff 'n' Tumble ought to be represented anywhere. The dream is big.

Let's look about your capacity. What is your daily output?

The output is too small. In a month, we make over 1,500 units.

That the totality of same or different designs?

In different designs. And we do not have the market distribution network yet to make 1,500 units per design. By the time we do have that, we will increase our capacity.

Have you ever tried to explore AGOA?

No, I have not. I actually have a label, it is Adenike, it is aftermy name. It is a line of Afrocentric design made from ankra. it is a line I thought I would market on the internet in America. That's why I gave it my name. It is a Yorruba name, a Nigerian name. It would have more meaning to them. Ruff 'n' Tumble is actually English. But Adenike, you could build a whole story around that. But I have been so busy trying to build my local market,that I have not ventured with that. But with the coming of AGOA. We should not really forget what AGOA is really. AGOA is a Trade Act. It just says that you will pay zero import duty because it is ccoming from your country. But everything else, you have to do yourself. Now, I am not ready to do that. And that is just it. I am not ready for it. If we can partner with an existing American company? Yes. I have recently found out that I was going about the whole thing, the wrong way. I want a seminar at the USIS and there was a lot more information as to what we should do and how we should go about it. So made me feel yes, I can. But I cannot go from here and face America and go where? To go and ask who for what? You know. Although there is an office in the American Embassy that you need to register with, you need to get your ISO 2000 certification. You need to have your company registered with them. You pay a fee and then they would look at technical partners. It is so involved and I am not sure that I could do both at the same time.

This is not good news for the country. Because it is people in your category who have attained some sort of standard, that ought to take up the AGOA opportunities. With this mindset, what hope do Nigeria have, bearing in mind that the AGOA years are going?

I know two years are gone already, I believe it is a lot more complicated than that, you know. First, they are just giving you, it is so tasking. You have to compete with everybody when you get out there in the open market.

You know: I am going to get this level of investment and customs will sit on my goods? that has happened to me before I got an order of about 1,500 garment from MarMarks in America and I spent days at Customs trying to send it out of Nigeria. Despite the fact that the papers are correct. I mean, there has to be a better way to do things for goodness sake.