We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elorm Dela-Seshie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elorm, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I started Adorn Me Africa in 2017 as a means to play a supportive role in assisting a few small brands and independent artisans in Ghana in getting more exposure to their brands and helping to sell their products to a wider market within the US.

My desire to invest back into my country and support entrepreneurs was born out of watching my parents help others, even when they didn’t have enough in their role as ministers. My exposure to African fashion also started with watching my parents confidently represent our Ghanaian culture while simultaneously trying to navigate and assimilate into a new country and culture. Through this lens I gained a great curiosity for my culture.

During my travels back to Ghana I seemingly stumbled upon a tight knit community of fashion creatives. Their designs were stunning and their stories encouraged and inspired me and I wanted to help them thrive in any way that I could. We do this by partnering with contemporary sustainable brands and makers across Africa to create opportunities for expansion and exposure in the marketplace.

Since starting with 1 country and a subscription box in 2017, we have expanded our country list to over over 16 countries across the continent of Africa and over 30 different partner brands; and our product offering to include art and beauty as well as curated events and group travel.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Since I was young maybe 10 or 11 I found myself intrigued by charting a path for myself. I saw my father start and stop one too many network marketing ventures in trial and error in addition to his work as a Pastor in order to bring in extra income and the energy and passion that he pursued each one with was inspiring. Even at that young age I felt very curious about the options that I had to pursue professionally because the traditional routes lacked luster to me. I learned of the entrepreneurial history of my family and how my grandfather started the first driving instruction school in Ghana and earned a great deal of success in doing so. I knew that this desire to venture off the beaten path was very much part of my DNA.

In 2017 after a 6 year career in the Pharmaceutical industry in a business operations role I found myself at a crossroad with staying in corporate America and trying to find my own way. So I took sabbatical to try and figure out what that next would look like. I decided to travel to Ghana and spend some time figuring that out.

During my travels in Ghana I connected with some amazing designers and makers who were creating beautiful contemporary fashion, unique accessories, art and handmade goods. The products and fashion was only a small part of what I was excited to invest in. The stories that came from these amazing people creating on the continent was the most exciting part of the process.

The pain point they were facing were the barriers to connecting and expanding their market share outside of the continent. While on the other end of the spectrum our customers had a desire to shop more mindfully for sustainable fashion and connect with unique artisans and their access was met with challenges with shipping and trying to coordinate with makers in Africa. Adorn Me Africa became a bridge to facilitate that.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

When I first started the brand one hurdle I had to overcome was the bad reputations that previous US brands had left behind them. Some had left brands with unpaid invoices, and a bad taste in their mouth. Needless to say they were not thrilled to partner with yet another US based brand. One thing that helped in overcoming this hurdle was my desire to have real connections with the people behind the brands and not just some transactional relationship.

In the process of making those connections I’ve made became a part of a whole new community and have many new friends. What sets us apart from others who have started marketplaces or concept stores similar to Adorn Me Africa is that we have a “relationship first” approach. We see each brand relationship as a partnership and approach it as such.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the major challenges that we encountered when we first started the brand as solely an individually curated subscription box was funding and scalability. We realized that this was not the most sustainable way to run the business and it created challenges in scaling the brand. In order to move things forward we decided to pivot in 2019. We relaunched as an online marketplace inspired by the marketplace that you would find in Ghana and many African countries, where you can find a variety of products in fashion, art, beauty and food.

With that pivot we garnered quite a bit of press and interest and opportunities to do pop-ups. We saw significant growth in the business and were eventually able to open a boutique location.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.adornmeafrica.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adornmeafrica/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adorn-me-africa/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7W7-qqWoWxfBpsVvoy7zMA

Image Credits
Marvin Germaine