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“RUFF N TUMBLE HAS SURVIVED 10 YEARS BECAUSE WE MOVE WITH GLOBAL TRENDS”- NIKE OGUNLESI

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Ruff ‘n’ Tumble is Nigeria’s foremost integrated manufacturer and retailer of children’s apparels with outlets, bearing its own brand name, as well as other brands. The outfit, owned by Mrs. Nike Ogunlesi, has grown into a household name, both locally and internationally in just a decade. Recently, she took her business to another level, when she opened two new outlets at the Genesis Centre in Port Harcourt and Adeniran Ogunsanya, Surulere, Lagos. Plans are also on to expand to Ibadan. She also introduced two new brands, Naija Boyz and Trendz Setter to her Ruff n Tumble line. This brand is to cater for the unique fashion sense of today’s young adults, celebrating the colourful iconoclastic fashion sense of Nigeria’s emerging youth. NaijaBoysZ is a hip-urban clothing range for young boys from ages 8-16. It incorporates the use of classic fashion items such as Jeans wear, interpreted into the new age ‘slim fit’ and ‘super skinny’ cuts. The NaijaBoyZ brand also features‘ slim fit’ shirts, tops and accessories such as mufflers and hats for the trend setting NaijaBoysZ look. For the young female adults, from the age of 8 to 16 years, Ruff’n’Tumble has created the trend setters collection. This collection is creative, fun and very detailed. It allows for the individual expression of personal style. Recently BOLA AKINBOADE met with Mrs Nike Ogunlesi and she opened up on 10 years of Ruff ‘n’ Tumble plus why she created a new brand.

Bola Akinboade(B.A):You seem to have conquered the world of children clothing in 10 years; what is the next stage?

Nike Ogunlesi(N.O):We are already at the next level that is why we are expanding; we are easily accessible now. We have outlets in Surulere, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Ikeja, Ikoyi. I just got an offer for a mall in Ibadan. The strategy is to move it into the major malls that are coming up in the different areas, so that the brand can be more readily accessible.

B.A: What are the challenges you have been faced with in 10 years?

N.O: The challenges are no different from what everybody is facing; power supply, ever increasing cost and overheads, so you have to do more numbers to be able to cover the overheads. We also got the human resource challenge, where the people who are coming out of school don’t have the real education and what they bring into the work place is very little. So you have to train people regularly and it’s at a cost. But we keep doing that. The challenges of too many government taxes; local government, state, federal government and other levies. All these things have to come out of the business one way or the other. The biggest challenge that I found out however, is that government policy is not supporting SME and something has to be done. Government has to put something in place to support SME because the backbone of any economy that has grown in the world has grown off from small businesses – people daring to start something, believing in their dream and believing that they can make something out of it. So there has to be conscious policy on the part of the government to ensure that there is support for those businesses, in terms of finance, structure and all kind of things

B.A: What would you say has changed with your brand over the years?

N.O: We have grown from just creatively clothing children and have grown into a lifestyle brand. And I think that is what we are, because we can get the socks, the jacket, swim wear, T-shirts, shorts, trousers, shirts and accessories. So you want to come into Ruff and Tumble, it’s a lifetime expression. I want to look like this, I want my children to look like this, I think that is what Ruff and Tumble is now all about. If you walk into the Ruff and Tumble, you will be guaranteed that whatever your children clothing need is, it will be met, because our age range is from 3 months to 16 years, boys and girls.

The thing about our brand is that we try and solve children clothing needs. We are not a store that you go to and find a bit of this or that, incomplete, no. If you walk into Ruff and Tumble and you are looking for a suit for example, we have suits from 12 months to 15 years. So you are guaranteed to find whatever you are looking for children at Ruff and Tumble.

B.A:Ruff ‘n’ Tumble is a household name, so why the need to create a new line -Naija Boyz and Trendz Setter?

N.O:One of the things that had helped our brand is the fact that we always move with the global trends. And from what we discovered over the years, they like to be fashionable and trendy. The trends are international for the children as they are for the adult. Because today’s child is watching MT V, Channel O, they are on Twitter, they are on Facebook, so the young Nigeria adult is very much in-tune with what is happening internationally, and therefore they want to dress like that and this collection allows them to do just that. They want to stand among their peers and think they are well dressed. These are things that we found from talking to the young adults, because they don’t like to be called children. They like to be called young adult. The collection is meant to help them enhance their own personal sense of style. For the boys, we have slim fit trousers, ultra skin trousers, so you can mix and match the whole collection to create a personal sense of style. It’s easy, there are details, it’s colourful. And we are saying it’s fresh, come to Ruff and Tumble, rewrite the rule and be a trend setter and I think that is the message of this collection -The Naija boyz collection.

For the girls, we are calling girls, the female young adults; they don’t like to be called children too. We are calling them Trendz Setter and the collection is influenced by a more matured sense of style, but tone down a bit because with young adults, you have to be careful, so they don’t come across as been tacky. You have to be very careful with the way you put the things together. But again, its coluorful and its fresh. Some of it are beaded, some come in silk, cotton, organza; it’s a whole mixture of beautiful fabrics, that has a wonderful feel and still friendly to the environment, which we live, because it’s hot here. The important thing is that it’s very useful. Again the dynamics of the collection allows you to mix and match freely, building your own personal sense of style. I think that is the message we want to send to young adult. We don’t necessarily want them all looking the same, we want to take the sense of what Ruff and Tumble is about, and interpret it to create a personal sense of style.

B.A: But why the need to create a separation between the boys and the girls, since they are within the same age bracket?

N.O: You don’t want to put the same label with the boys and the girls. The boys are very delicate. What we discovered is that they need their own brand that stands alone and that is what Naija Boyz is. The are assertive, they know what they want. They have a strong sense of style because they are in touch on twitter, on facebook, they know what Justin Timberlake wore at which concert; Akon, Usher, they see the way those people look and some of them just want to be miniature of those guys. So we have got the waist coat, the hat, slim tie, slim fit pants and slim fit shirts. So if you want to look like that, Ruff and Tumble got it. For the girls, its Trendz setter.

B.A: Ruff ‘n’ Tumble is perceived as a premium brand and most people believe it is a very expensive brand

N.O: Why we have put a lot of structure in place and a lot of energy building a brand that stands apart in the industry, it doesn’t mean we are unaffordable. Our prices start from N1,950, for 100% cotton T-Shirts, and I don’t think that is expensive; I think that is very reasonable. But what we are saying to our customers is, we know there is an economic crunch; we have made every effort to work on the prices, to give our customers as much value as we can for what they are spending. It’s a brand for anyone and we don’t discriminate.

B.A: Do you produce here or abroad? Are they made in Nigeria?

N.O: Not everything is 100% made in Nigeria. But the important thing for us is that we carry our home made brand along with other brands. Now, if you can’t wear our outfit and you can tell the difference, who cares where it was made. For me, there is already a major achievement; the brand can sit along major international brands and nobody can’t tell the difference. You know a lot of people have this believe that most people take their fabric to China, mass produce and still come home and tagged it “Made in Nigeria.” The garment industry is very dynamic, and we can’t operate outside what happens in the global context. Really, truly and honestly, it’s cheaper to produce anything in China. If you have the volumes, it’s easier to produce everything in China because you can’t compete with them. Until we set up industrial trade pact, where you can rent space and you are not carrying the overhead of a factory, then we will be able to compete with China.

So what have we done? This is what we know we can do it well, we can’t do it to the best of any international standard, so that when you pick up this garment, it is not where it is made, it’s wow, this is amazing. I want to buy this. That is what is important. Why we are proud is that even though there is a negative feeling on things that comes out of Nigeria, I think also, we should give ourselves a bit more credit. We should believe more in ourselves and our own capability. All our clothes have a label inside of it that says proudly made in Nigeria. So what we make and sell is comparable to anything that is made anywhere else in Nigeria. We don’t cut out labels and put our own in it; we don’t do things like that because for us, integrity is one of the core value of this organization, and once you start doing that, you are already sending a wrong message to your staffs. But what we make, we can stand proudly anywhere and say we made it. And we are all Nigerians; there is no non-Nigerians working in this organization.

B.A: Are you planning going to have franchise that will carry your label in line with your expansion strategy?

N.O: At the moment, no. We want to run our own stores. And we have put a lot of energy into building structures and we want to do that on a solid platform before we expand into that.

B.A:Now that you have different stores every where, how do you manage the activities that go on in those branches?

N.O: We have a very clear mission and vision, we have good structure. We have department heads, and we spend a lot of time, money and energy in putting structures in place, because you cannot do those things without structures. So with that, I don’t see why we can’t achieve it.

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