Have you ever had one of those moments when an idea just strikes you and get off your seat and start pacing around in your apartment,talking to yourself in quiet whispers so that your housemate doesn’t start wondering what is going on? Then you retire to your room with a pen and a pad and start scribbling down your thoughts as they come in so as not to forget them? The more you think of this idea, the larger it becomes and the more you scribble down those little points. With each word written down comes another idea and before you know it the whole picture becomes clear in front of your mind’s eye and it looks gigantic, but awesome at the same time. Well that was how i felt when the idea of Kayoja struck me sometime in June last 2015.

One of the battles I fought the hardest was coming up with a name for the brand. I tried out a number of things that just didn’t sound right. My initials, a bunch of words translated to Spanish,Italian, French, Portuguese, just naming a few. Non sounded right to me. So some how I decided to come back home, to my routes. Then i tried putting a few words from the 3 major languages we have in Nigeria, bearing in mind the intended concept and what i wanted the brand to represent. I came up with “Kaya”,meaning Luggage,baggage or box of clothes/personal belongings in Hausa, depending on the context, and “Oja”, meaning market in Yoruba. I merged the two and ran a quick search on google,within my chosen niche and found out that the name hadn’t been used yet, so i settled immediately for “Kayoja”. It sounded right to me, fit like a glove for what i had in mind. The more i thought about it the more i couldn’t stop. So i made a decision, I hit the ground running and haven’t stopped since then.

I decided to start building up some kind of online presence for the brand name since it is after all going to be internet based. The first place i thought about was Instagram,being a very visual based social media platform. And there it began.

This article is a rundown of some of our most popular posts on Instagram, starting with our first which isn’t exactly popular, but it being the first earns it the right to be on this list.

It was a Repost or a Regrann(the app in use at the time) from Everyday African Fashion. Three outfits from Empire7 Clothings’ Bamboo Collection”. It generated only 11 likes in total. Very small but at the time it meant so much, a huge morale boost,a pat on the back as i would call it, letting me know that we had taken off on the right foot. I reposted it on the 6th of June 2015, that was the day it began, our campaign to make Kayoja a house hold name as far as African Fashion is concerned.

Like i said earlier, i will be listing a number of post that generated some really good feedback. It’s not so much when compare with some fashion pages on Instagram that have huge followership base, but it is remarkable to us because it just lets us know that we are on the right track.

This was from @teddytells,  a Kente patterned attire made by Elikem Kumordzie, a Ghanaian designer who was also a BBA: The Chase housemate. It has generated 55 likes since the 2nd of December 2015.

This next one, which has generated 56 likes till date, is a post from Debonair Afrik, an Ankara skirt dungarees with leather straps, worn so elegantly by this beautiful model who has remained unknown to us.

Gathering 68 likes till date is this next post from Izzy Clothing. The resulting outcome from such a brilliant fabric in the hands of a prolific designer is usually awesome, such can be said about this attire. @mcdavid77, the guy in the picture certainly killed the look, while keeping it simple in his sandals. I particularly love it.

Jide Jayson Olumide, the CEO of Joe Fresh Kouture (JFK) comes next in this post, with 74 likes till date. I am going to use one of my favorite words to classify the way he looked in this one, “dapper”. The color combo of black, gold and while came together brilliantly in this agbada.

And the ” “dapper chief” as i referred to him in my post on Instagram, Noble Igwe, comes next with 74 likes till date. The Three Agbadas were made by two different designers though but all are exceptional. Nothing less can be expected, Noble Igwe, the CEO of Style Vitae is undoubtedly a style influencer so he surely can’t be seen wearing anything less than exceptional.

An African print Brand Label,Nanawax Boutique follows next with 74 likes till date. This absolutely elegant African print Blazer and its matching handbag got a lot of recognition for us and created a substantial amount of buzz at the time because it was one of our earlier posts. It was posted only 13 days after our page was launched and we even got a few people requesting for the attire, it was exciting indeed.

And then our most liked post till date happens to also be from Nanawax yet again. It’s just an absolutely gorgeous attire, brilliantly designed with beautiful prints. The mono-sleeved cape design kept the likes coming in at an encouraging rate and has come up to 86 likes till date. The ladies utterly loved it.

With a total of 5700 likes and counting and over 670 followers, our Instagram handle @KayojaNigeria has managed to gradually but steadily build that online presence that we were looking for. There is still a whole lot to come that’s something i can say for certain.

Ugbah Chukwuemeka, Founder: Kayoja Nigeria. Continue reading “Our Journey”

Well it eventually came to this, we decided to launch Kayoja’s blog before the actual site. It wasn’t exactly what we had planned, or probably hoped for but, as they say ” life is what happens when you are busy making plans. So its fair to say that life has prompted Kayoja to launch earlier than it was scheduled to and on an entirely different … Continue reading And then…our first post!!!