As CEO of Deva Petals and manager of Fashion Cafe, a luxury fashion platform in Abuja, Rahama Indimi Babangida is in a business that pushes her rather demure personality into the glitzy spotlight of the style world. But the alumnus of Lynn University, Florida, United States, is managing just fine. She shed more light in this interview with ORUKPE NELSON

What exactly are you into?

I am into so many things that sometimes it is hard to pinpoint exactly what I do. I own Deva Clothing Line and Deva Petals. One could say business runs in my family. My siblings, even when they are still students, are usually into one business or the other.

At the moment, I am helping my sister with her clothing line. She positions Fashion Café Abuja as an upscale fashion lounge, which caters to both male and female, though mostly female between the ages of 16 and 50. We aim for the cafe to exude elegance. Our intention is to stock luxurious and high end quality designs in the Cafe.

We have a variety of styles from different brands and designers. We stock some brands that target the young clientele as well as the older level clientele. Our belief that quality in any form cannot be compromised drives us to the top. We aim to be a “one-stop Cafe” that caters to the interest of the Nigerian fashion buffs.

We provide our resident brands with multi-functional retail space for the display of different labels and designs. We are proud to support established as well as young, upand- coming entrepreneurs with real talent. We make sure that the Fashion Café makes an inevitable institutional fashion platform, the one-stop platform for our customers’ desire.

How did you decide on the idea?

Well, the idea came to us naturally. In short, I can say the business had chosen us because it is a natural call and a good blend for us. Right from school, my sister could think through this fashion business, that since she is naturally cut out for the fashion business, one of the things that she should do is to give her fashion business a structure, which should involve drawing up appropriate boundaries for lines of business and defining shared services.

It also occurred to me that I have to put in place some consideration for other coordinating mechanism that allows for adequate leverage. So, the moment we were set for the business, my academic exposure really helped me to easily specify the size and the shape of the business with indicative resource levels and location.

So, the whole idea has helped us to ensure the creative process that yields high quality decisions on strategic priorities, resource allocation and business performance management. Here, I can proudly say that our designs and labels are basically about working to showcase the expected African cultural dimension for how people should dress between functions or teams. This dimension goes beyond communicating values such as “trust” and “respect” to being respectfully explicit about our total personalities.

What has the response been like?

It has been very impressive. Of course, you know Nigerians are people who love to dress well, and our styles and designs are all wearable. My sister is just fascinated about being simple but not simplistic in her creativity. Talking precisely about the response, on a daily basis, fashion designers, buyers with a touch of class stroke our fabrics, and sneak glances at our rival collections and labels, hoping to pick our statement pieces to match and to get pepped up.

When your customer is facing a serious issue, they want an expert who is proficient at providing solutions, which I can say that we have. So, in fashion business, we could take the steps to carve out our area of interest, and we even look to having customers struggle to keep pace with us.

What was starting off like?

Just like any other business, it was not a jolly ride. It actually started with some challenges which I considered very synonymous with the early beginning of every business. However, it has been quite satisfying and worth the while.

How have you been able to surmount the challenges?

The challenge we often face is how to make the next collection better than the last. It is very tough competing with yourself. This is a system we created, not only to please ourselves, but to also please our clients and customers. Some challenges have been surmounted, and you have to understand that challenges are part of life. So, we see challenges on daily basis and what is important for us is that we beat them to it in the course of our business.

What influences the choice of those you decide to exhibit their labels?

It is high quality creativity, smart finishing and impressive clothing materials or fabrics. What this means is that the designers must up their games, more so because we must be conscious of the global trends. We carefully select brands that appeal to all ages. We select brands based on a variety of different styles in order for our customers and clients to get what they want. When there is variety like that, everyone is bound to find something that appeals to them.

How do you make profit doing this?

I think it has to do with my interest in the business. Everything worth doing ought to be done well, and then of course profit would surely come. So, regarding making profit, we are not stagnant by the grace of God. Our clients have received our offerings relatively well. In our four years of existence, we have established strong distribution network across Nigeria by partnering with key designers. Furthermore, we are also looking to partner with some e-commerce platforms to drive adoption and sales of our labels and designs.

And we are conscious of the fact that if you want to grow your business with incredible velocity, then you have to make it everyone’s goal to attract those customers you are likely to deliver the greatest value. If sales and marketing work together to attract ideal customers to your business, then you will waste less time chasing rainbows, and spend more time counting revenue.

Our understanding is that businesses that truly commit to solving the disconnect between sales and marketing will stand out from the competition, better meet the needs of their customers, and significantly grow their businesses.

What makes this different from similar businesses?

As I said, we carefully chose our fabrics and designs. And at the same time, we make sure that we exhibit designs that are unique and creatively African. The distinguishing factor for us is that our Cafe is not only to meet the needs of the high net worth patrons.

And our strategic objective is not to merely get noticed either, or network and just enjoy fashion vibe, but it is also to strongly target the superlative in artistry and/or creativity. We aspire to become more customer focused. We understand not only the needs and priorities of our target customers, but we have also put in place the best structure to address those needs.

What do you intend to achieve with this?

We strive to achieve satisfaction for our market. We make sure that we deliver value which we take very seriously. I remember we wanted to get it right. We have tried so hard to find the right fashion rhythm and all we wanted was to offer the best for everyone.

We are poised to be spirited-fashion designers, with the world of art and design our greatest passion in life. I knew that I wanted to pursue a business in design from a young age. My academic background has provided me with the skills to achieve my business goals of working as designers.

Our designs are based on our understanding of the kind of clothing that is best for our market. We often bring our African culture and personality into our designs. For example, we could ask ourselves to provide a design for a casual outing with indigenous influence. So, we work with the notion of a common theme in our indigenous African culture. And we want to be a role model for other indigenous young people, and show them that they can do it too.