Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hope Anusiem. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hope, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Fashion Row Collective was birthed out of the mission to reimagine what a connected fashion community could look like in Atlanta. Not to be a New York or LA, but leveraging the strengths that we have in our city which is centered around creating RETAIL-driven opportunities, TECHNOLOGY-enabled accessibility, all while ensuring that we stay true to the CULTURE of the consumers in our market. Fashion Row Collective is a place where all things fashion could live, a place where people can connect with unique local and emerging fashion brands and find their tribe in the fashion industry.

Hope, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Back in 2010, my sisters and I was inspired to create a high-end fashion brand out of Atlanta that was inspired by the beauty of our Nigerian culture. We didn’t know the first thing about building a fashion line or brand, but we had passion, grit, and determination. A few months later we launched and debuted our line at Africa Fashion Week in New York and the feedback and response to our brand was through the roof! We were receiving global inquiries from retailers to carry our products, but there was only one problem…we had zero inventory to sell nor a plan to build it! Fashion and entrepreneurship was my passion and whether it was flying back and forth to China or New York, I stopped at nothing to find a way to build our company and brand. I eventually left my cushy business consulting job to focus on my business full time and was determined to learn the process. I was able to develop partnerships with international suppliers and develop connections with boutiques and a global African Fashion Marketplace to sell our clothing. Things were looking up — until they weren’t. The local manufacturer, which took years to secure, could no longer could keep up with our demand or brand quality and things quickly fell apart. I spent seven years building our brand at that point and it all came undone because we lacked easy access to the right resources. During the seven years I spent building and developing our fashion brand I quickly realized how difficult it was to find the right people with the right resources who are involved in the fashion industry within my city. And after several years of struggling, I had to put my dream business on the shelf. I don’t know how many people out there have had to let go something they loved, but this was a devastating moment for me personally.

Fast forward several years later, I created the Fashion Row Collective. The Fashion Row Collective is a future platform and community that makes it easy for fashion brands, suppliers, and consumers to connect, collaborate, and engage in unique experiences together. Our goal is to develop our community through creating unique fashion events that drive brand awareness and customer activations for local and emerging fashion brands as well as bring fashion lovers together in a way that is fun, cool, and exciting. At our events we want to create opportunities for players in the Atlanta fashion space to connect and gain access to the right people, at the right time, to propel their fashion goals forward. We want people in our community to connect with like-minded individuals, create opportunities to collaborate with each other, and hopefully continue the growth of the fashion industry in our city.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was trying to build a business through perfection. Hello my name is Hope and I’m a recovering perfectionist…lol. In my former company, I learned this lesson the hard way. Our brand was about quality, luxury, and excellence. We wanted to build the Rolls Royce of African fashion apparel. What I didn’t know was that being that African fashion was a new trend, customers just wanted it, no matter what it looked like or how it came. Focusing too much on perfecting the brand before rolling anything out, cost us speed and traction in a trending niche market and it ultimately became a wrench in our entire process. As I’m building my business today, I’ve learned to start before you’re ready. Yes do the work and strive for excellence, but just do enough to get something going so that you can test your ideas, get feedback from your customers, and continue to perfect your brand along the way. Having a Type A personality, someone once told me, “Hope, just know your 70% is someone else’s 100%. So give yourself a break and trust that whatever you do will be good enough!”

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I’ve always been inspired to bring people together through experiences because I believe there is power in creating synergies through collaboration. When people have the opportunity to connect and interact I believe powerful ideas can be created. Last October I attended a fashion event. While there I met another individual, Natasha Edwards, who shared very similar interests and passions in the fashion space as myself. The following week we decided to grab dinner and discuss potential opportunities in collaborating ideas and efforts. Five weeks later we planned and hosted an amazing “Fashion Night Out” fashion and art mixer at the infamous Art Meso exhibit and it was a major success! We didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of our fashion journey together. Fast forward to today, Natasha has partnered with Fashion Row Collected through her company Natasha’s Thread PR to provide Fashion PR and Brand Management services for our various fashion events and experiences. To me, that’s the power of community, that’s the power of collaboration, that’s the power of creating spaces where people can connect authentically and organically. When you create the space, you leave room for magic to happen. Living in a post pandemic world people are longing for community and real connections like never before and that is the heart of what the Fashion Row Collective intends on bringing to the marketplace.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fashionrow.com
• Instagram: @official_fashionrow

Image Credits
A.KolaProduction and Fashion Row Collective