MoneyStory: The Bride Who Saved Her Business and the Partner Who Nearly Ended It

Age

31

Occupation

Fashion designer and label founder

Location

Lagos

Housing

₦600,000 (rented apartment)

Monthly Income

₦800,000 (variable)

Current Savings

₦350,000

What is your earliest memory of money?

My mother selling tomatoes and pepper in front of our house in Ikorodu. She would be outside before 6am, arranging everything while the rest of the road was still quiet. At the end of the day, she would sit and count what she made, then separate it. This pile for food, this pile for school, this pile in the tin. She had a small tin she kept under her bed. It looked ordinary. It was the most important thing in that house.

I did not understand any of it at the time. I just thought we were managing. Later I understood the tin was exactly why we were managing.

What was your family like financially growing up?

My father worked in a government parastatal. Steady income, not much else. My mother's tomato business was what handled the gaps. New uniforms before September. Extra lesson fees. My WAEC registration. Everything that needed money beyond what my father's salary could reach went through her.

I have four siblings. I was the second. There was always something to share, always something being divided. We were not hungry. We were not struggling in the serious way that some families struggle. But we also knew that nothing came without thought, and that you did not ask for things more than once.

How did that upbringing shape how you think about money now?

I always have a backup calculation running somewhere in my head. Even when things are going well, there is a part of me figuring out how long it would last if everything stopped. I do not know if that is healthy. It is just how I have always been.

I am also very uncomfortable with waste. When I am with people who order food and do not finish it, or who treat money like it has no consequence, something in me reacts. Not judgment. Just noticing. The tin is still there somewhere in my thinking.

When did you first earn money?

My aunty taught me to sew. I was in JSS 3. She had a tailoring shop in Ikorodu, and I would spend weekends there watching her. She did not plan to teach me. I just kept watching until she started explaining. By SS 2, I was hemming things for her customers. She would give me ₦200, ₦500. Small small work.

The first time I made something completely from scratch was a skirt for my classmate's birthday. I measured her, cut the fabric, sewed it over three evenings after school. She paid me ₦2,000. I put that money on my bed and looked at it for a while. I had made something with my hands and someone had decided it was worth paying for. That was a new feeling.

Did you study fashion formally?

No. I studied Business Administration. My parents wanted something they could explain to people. I graduated in 2017. Got a job that same year at a logistics company, doing admin. ₦65,000 a month.

I stayed two years. I was unhappy the entire time. Not because the job was terrible. It was a fine job with fine people. But I would come home every evening and go straight to my sewing machine, and those two or three hours felt more like real life than anything I had done during the day. I was tolerating most of my life just to get to the part I actually wanted.

When did you leave?

I had ₦300,000 in savings and a sewing machine I had bought myself. I told my parents I was freelancing. My mother looked at me for a long time before she said anything. What she said was: "Are you sure?" I said yes.

I was not sure.

What were those first months like?

I was working from my bedroom. Sewing machine in the corner next to the wardrobe. I would take orders, sew at night, post pictures on Instagram during the day. Asoebi, alterations, custom outfits. Anything.

Some months were okay. ₦120,000, ₦150,000. Then November 2019, I made ₦40,000. My rent was ₦35,000. I paid it and had ₦5,000 left for everything else. I ate a lot of garri that month. I borrowed ₦3,000 from my younger sister and did not tell her what it was for.

I was not telling anyone what was actually going on. When people asked how the business was going, I said it was picking up slowly. What that meant was that I was one bad month away from calling my mother and asking to come back home.

What turned things around?

December 2019. A bride found me on Instagram. She wanted her bridal train of eight people dressed for a Christmas Eve wedding. I went to her house and we spoke. She was very specific about what she wanted. I quoted ₦450,000 for all eight. She did not hesitate. She paid ₦200,000 as deposit that same evening.

I sat in my car outside her estate and cried quietly for a few minutes. It had been a hard year and this felt like an answer.

I delivered the full order, she was happy, she posted about me. December alone, I made close to ₦700,000. I used it to rent a small workspace, one room in a compound for ₦80,000 a year. I bought a second machine. I hired a teenage apprentice. Everything was going well until Sade came along.

Who is Sade?

Sade was a stylist. We met at an industry event in early 2020. She was well connected and spoke about fashion in Lagos in a way that made sense. We started meeting, talking about a possible collaboration. Her connections, my production capacity. It looked good on paper.

We registered a business and applied for a state SME loan. ₦2.5 million. We got it in February 2020. A month later, COVID arrived and everything locked down.

The boutique that was supposed to stock our ready to wear pieces closed. The orders we had lined up disappeared. And then Sade's phone started going unanswered.

What do you mean?

I would call and it would ring and ring. Sometimes voicemail. I started going to our shared workspace and she would not be there. Her assistant would say she was traveling, or in a meeting, or not available. I knew what was happening. I just did not want to know it yet, because knowing it meant accepting the full situation.

By the time I accepted it, the money was gone. Some into equipment, some into stock we could not move, some I still cannot account for. I was left with ₦1.4 million in debt under my name, a business that was not operating, and a partner I could not reach.

What did you do with that?

Nothing, for a few weeks. I would go to the workspace, look at the machines and the fabric, and leave. One evening, I locked up, sat in my car, and did not start the engine for almost an hour. I was not crying, ha; I could not even cry. I was not calling anyone. I just sat there.

Eventually I called the loan office. They told me I was liable regardless of what my partner had done. I knew that already but I needed to hear it said out loud.

Someone told me later that Sade had been planning to relocate to the UK before any of this happened. I do not know if that is the full story, but it does not change anything.

How did you start paying it back?

Slowly and badly at first. In 2020 I had almost no income because of the lockdowns and because my business had stopped while I tried to understand what had happened. I would make ₦30,000, ₦50,000 in a month and put ₦20,000 toward the debt.

I went back to small orders. Asoebi again. Alterations. The work I had been trying to move away from. I had spent two years telling myself I was building a proper fashion label. And there I was hemming skirts for ₦5,000.

But debt does not care about your feelings about the work. I kept going.

How did rebuilding actually look day to day?

By 2021 I had restructured the repayment plan, ₦50,000 to ₦80,000 a month. My income was growing slowly. By end of 2021 I was making around ₦400,000 on good months.

In 2022 I started being intentional about Instagram again. More consistent posting, process videos, behind the scenes content. In mid 2023, two influencers with real followings posted about wearing my pieces within the same week. I do not know if it was coordinated. It might have been coincidence.

My followers went from about 4,000 to around 21,000 in two months. The type of messages I was getting changed. Clients who would previously have been out of my price range were reaching out. I raised my prices.

How did that feel, after everything?

Strange. I had been working toward something like this for years. When it started happening I kept waiting for it to reverse. Every new enquiry I would think, okay but will they actually order. Every order I would think, okay but will they pay. I had been burned enough that I could not just enjoy it.

But the orders did not reverse. By end of 2023 I had two full time sewers and a cutter. Monthly income around ₦600,000 to ₦700,000. Now I am around ₦800,000 most months.

I still have ₦420,000 left on that loan. I think about that number regularly.

What has this done to your personal life?

I was in a relationship for three years that ended in 2022. He was a good person. I was someone who came home with nothing left over. I was stressed about debt, working long hours, in the middle of rebuilding. I could not be present the way a relationship needs.

He never made it about the money directly. But I think the reality of being in your late twenties, carrying debt that was not entirely your fault, and running a business that was barely holding together was not what he had imagined. There were conversations about the future that I could not have properly because I did not know what my future looked like.

I do not blame him sha. I do not blame myself. It was just the timing.

What does a typical workday actually look like now?

I am in the workspace by 8 am. The first hour is messages and orders, and whatever small fires need handling. Then I work alongside my team on production. I do quality checks on finished pieces. I communicate with clients.

Most days I leave by 6 pm or 7 pm. It took me three years to commit to leaving at a reasonable time. For a long time, I was there until 9 pm or 10 pm regularly, and I wondered why I was always exhausted.

I take Sundays off now. That also took years to actually implement.

What does your monthly spending look like?

My transportation costs around 60k, and I spend around 90k on groceries. I pay around 30k for electricity, while I always invest 200k in fabric and raw materials for production. Staff wages for two sewers and a cutter total 250k. Additionally, my loan repayment is 80k per month, and I always set aside 60k for personal care; at least I can’t be looking like my problem. I aim to save at least 100k when possible and have a miscellaneous budget of 110k for unexpected expenses. I always have unexpected expenses, which are often unavoidable. That totals more than ₦800k on paper.

On a good order month, everything is fine. On a quiet month, savings disappear and I draw from what I made the month before. This has been the cycle.

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How much do you have saved?

About ₦350,000. That is an uncomfortable number for someone who has been running a business for six years. But two of those years were largely spent repaying someone else's decisions. I try to hold onto that when the number bothers me too much.

How would you rate your financial happiness right now?

5 out of 10 on a regular day. 7 out of 10 when a big payment lands. 3 out of 10 when I look at the loan balance.

I am not where I thought I would be at 31. But I have not quit, and the debt is almost gone. When that number becomes zero, I think something will shift for me. I am waiting for that moment.