STARTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS AS A MEDICAL STUDENT – Q&A WITH THE FOUNDER OF CLOTHING BRAND, KNITER
KNITER is a fashion brand founded earlier this year to promote a more sustainable and holistic future for the fashion industry. What many people don’t know is that KNITER is founded by a medical student. Below, we discuss with the Founder, CEO and a member of our community on what it means to be a medic trying to pave way in the fashion industry.
1. Let’s talk about one of your brand, KNITER… What inspired you to come up with this business idea?
KNITER is a brand inspired by the world around me. Like I mentioned before I am very passionate about helping people; I feel such a strong connection to the world and people around me. I have always loved volunteering, raising money for charities for as long as I can remember. I guess the final push for the start of the business and therefore my biggest inspiration behind it, was my realisation of the vast wealth inequalities in our world. Coming from a third world country myself, I know people who are stuck in a cycle of poverty with no chance of getting out. For those in this situation, it is not a question of working harder or longer hours to escape the cycle of poverty they have found themselves in, but rather preventing their exploitation. I have always wanted to study medicine because I love helping people, but medicine is a long road and I really didn't want to wait until I was a doctor to start helping. I wanted to make an active difference now. The fashion industry is one of the biggest industries in our world today, but sadly one of the most toxic, both to the environment and to the workers. I love fashion. I love clothes. I love expressing myself. The fashion sector encompasses these “loves” of mine, and it’s such a shame that such a beautiful industry is tainted by such toxic behaviours. Essentially, I wanted to build a brand which preserves the beauty and purity of fashion. Therefore. anyone who feels the same way I do can enjoy fashion for the beautiful art it is without the child labour, without the toxic release of chemicals into the environment, or clothes that sit in a landfill because of terrible quality. For me, the biggest inspiration behind KNITER is my dream for the future: a future where we all make fair and just choices with full reverence to each other and the planet we all share.
2. How did you find potential investors to fund your webstore?
I have been fortunate enough to not have needed any serious big investors. I have been able to lead the brand this far primarily through my part time job, parents, friends, and family contributions. I guess one reason I haven’t really needed “potential investors” is because of the business model (so I think my first piece of advice is to take your time and craft your business model properly, as if you’re presenting it to Jeff Bezos to invest in. From this, you’d really know your approximate cost, the direction of the brand and your own timelines/targets for your business).
One thing I really wanted to capture with this brand is the magic of getting your clothes made just for you. Personally, in our rushed reality where everyone is used to getting things ASAP, I wanted a brand that took a step back from this constant frenzy we experience in our daily lives, the next best thing. One of the things I love the most about KNITER is that it is a slow fashion brand, so while you wait 6-8 weeks for delivery you know that the clothing you ordered is made by women who have never met you, yet still pay so much attention to your clothes, and it really makes me cherish the pieces so much more. The clothes turn out so beautiful because each stitch is made with you in mind. And, when you get your order, you really can see the difference it being handmade makes to the quality and feel of the clothes. I really love that! I think it is something very special that I believe not many brands are trying to do this. Further, because, I wanted each artisan to have a name behind each product they are making, I must wait for the orders to come in before communicating with the artisans, so I usually have the money from the customers, which allows me to pay for the products.
Although, I still have to fork out quite a bit of money for the production of samples, sourcing the raw materials especially is one that has been quite expensive, so I have needed my trusty investors. KNITER as a brand is one that not only cares about the people that make the brand, but also the animals. No animal cruelty techniques, like over sheering which is not very compassionate to the animal, are adopted. We also predominantly use alpaca wool to produce our garments, I chose alpacas because of how gentle they are to the earth when they graze, so we can raise quite a few alpacas without damaging the earth or increasing the risk of soil erosion. Coincidentally, alpaca wool is also hypoallergenic, so this makes the brand accessible to a larger group. All of these considerations, mean that it can take at least 6 weeks to source the raw materials, from the alpaca sheering through to our ethical dyeing process (to ensure no dye used get into the water supply). Basically, without my investors, people would have to wait 3 months for their orders, and I really don't want that because 3 months is a long time to wait to wear the pieces. I raise the funds, working overtime if I need to, so that we have the raw materials ready to go for when we release our clothes to our customers.
What was the process of creating your own business? Please give us a brief timeline and sources of how you found the people you eventually employed.
First thing was finding a unique idea, like a niche. The one thing about a niche is that it has to be valuable, there’s no sense in starting a niche if no one wants it. If no one wants it then it is not sustainable (in the business sense) or valuable. To help me with this process, I would brainstorm about ten advantages/ why people would want to buy into that niche, if I couldn’t think of ten then the niche is not good enough and needs refining. After I identified a valuable niche, the next thing was finding a mentor, like someone who is passionate about helping other people in that niche and are a success themselves and you literally have to cajole them into helping you. So my mentor I would literally stalk her social media pages, interacting talking and just trying to woo her. And I can honestly say without her guidance I literally wouldn't know where to start, she pointed me to resources like Fiver and all these sites on the internet where I could find people to help me develop Kniter. The one great thing about having a good mentor is that they have done something similar enough to your niche, and it’s literally fun to just pick their brains about what to do. Brief timeline all this took about 6 months to source all the resources and building blocks, so niche finding, mentor finding, finding artisans.
I know you haven’t started medicine yet, but how do you manage a Biomedical Science Degree, a job and also the demanding process for applying to medicine, while starting a brand?
Saying it like that, it does sound like a lot. Truth is, to me I realise that my biggest priority in life is the feeling of balance, so at each moment when trying to achieve balance in my life my priorities at each moment can change, and each moment must be equally experienced and respected for its role in helping me achieve balance. For me, the best way I manage everything is by going after everything, fully experiencing each moment as the time comes with no expectations apart from being present - it is having no attachment to anything while being attached to everything like the hands on a clock.
Very interesting… having no attachment sounds very difficult, would you say this is the biggest challenge to running a brand, achieving a goal, if not what would you say is the biggest challenge facing your brand launch?
The biggest challenge in running a brand and facing my brand launch is actually the rollercoaster of experiences associated with starting. The commitment I have made to myself to fully experience each moment of everything is definitely overwhelming. Experiencing everything doesn't sound too bad when it is a happy moment, but it is not so good when you've gone 3 months without a sale and you keep investing all your earnings in the brand, but you also have the desire to do normal 21 year old stuff like party and sleep, however you have to make the decision on how to allocate the limited funds. While all this is going on, you’re sitting with the marketing team for 3rd time this week trying to figure out why people don’t trust you enough to buy. Then, it is really hard, because as a leader you have to keep up a brave face and motivate the team even when you don’t feel so motivated yourself and try and keep up team morale. I’ve got such a great community of random people who tell me via emails and on Instagram how much they love and support the brand, and for me this is enough to make the difficult times not too bad, and each sale is so special because of how much I have had to work to get it.
How do you cope with managing people who are perhaps a lot older than you, at such a young age?
Interesting that you bring this up, because I am quite informal and “childish” in some aspect I do get looked down upon a lot at first impressions, but I really try to see things from people’s perspectives so I can handle it. For example, Anna, the lady who helps me communicate with out artisans, is older than my Grandpa, and I vividly remember one of our first conversations we had because it is a conversation I keep having with many of the people I work with: she said something along the lines of “you’re a 20 year old doctor, why are you in fashion- designing clothes? I thought doctors weren’t very creative?”, and to this question my response as always been the same, and it is always essentially a polite version of: “first of all I am not a doctor, I am a student… And second let’s have a chat about my vision”… I basically find that I have to prove myself a lot more to people who are older than me, but I find that being calm, patient and empathetic because I understand that I am not doing what a traditional “science student” should be doing, so it is not personal. But I am not sure why there is this stereotype in the first place, my love for science is another facet to my personality, just like my love for clothes. I basically find that after the “let’s have a chat” conversation, they see that I am not crazy, and I am truly passionate about my vision. I have found that people tend to listen when the vision and the task for them is very clear, regardless of their age.
Being the founder of a company for the first time is immensely difficult with lots of pressure, what is the best piece of advice you can give to someone who wants to build their own idea/company from scratch?
Impostor syndrome is a real thing, so prepare for that. Some days I cannot understand how I got here, but don’t ever let that stop you from believing or working on your idea. Like a lot of people (yourself included) will tell you who you are, and why who you are means you can’t build or work on your idea but it’s being clear to yourself on your vision. For me, the biggest advice and motivator is realising that when you have an idea it’s no longer yours and you must do your very best to make the idea a reality. I strongly believe, God, the universe or whatever never gives us more than we can handle so when an idea finds us, we must do our best to serve the idea. KNITER is a brand inspired by the world around, I don’t see the brand as my idea, it is an idea that I believe in an am trying to execute; and I am allowed to pursue the things I believe in.
What is your vision with the brand? And how do you differentiate your brand with other clothing brands?
Well, this is simple, growing up a common saying I heard was “dress how you want to be addressed”. KNITER is a chance to show the world that clothes are more than just clothes, they represent our values and what we stand behind. Currently, I don’t see many brands whose primary goal is to help its workers and the environment as its primary vision, there aren’t many positive and good values behind a lot of the fashion brands today- it is crowded by many brands making a lot of noise about the wrong things. KNITER is a brand that wants to show other brands a way of achieving “success” without the costs to our humanity or the environment. It isn’t my dream to have everyone wearing my designs and be in every clothing shop in the world, but it is my dream for everyone to know how I choose to lead the brand to “success”; hopefully, through the brand I can show the world the true beauty and potential behind the clothes we wear.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anitalise Ogedengbe is currently a year 1 Medical student at University College London (UCL) at the UK. She previously studied at St Georges, University of London and holds a degree in Biomedical Sciences. Anita is passionate about helping people, so most of her hobbies and interests revolve around her desire to help people so she works part time as a Carer. During her free time, she enjoys handcrafting presents and gifts for people. Following her path of creative and innovative expertise, Anita eventually founded her own brand, KNITER.
CONTACT: anitalise@kniter.co.uk
WEBSITE: https://thekniter.co.uk/
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