We were lucky to catch up with Lewis Olaoluwa recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lewis , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Coming up with a name proved extremely challenging in the early phases of developing our brand. In 2018, we, the owners of Traditional Trims L.L.C. visited Nigeria where we were inspired by the multipurpose functionality of their everyday attire called “Kaftan”. Growing up in the United States with parents who migrated to the U.S. from Nigeria, we often wore this attire mainly for occasions such as naming ceremonies for newborns, birthdays, weddings, and more. As we matured, we pivoted, and became more immersed in “hip hip” fashion and grew to love so many of the brands that emphasized African American culture. Like many young men, at some point there was a need to explore and revisit our cultural identity and traditions of our parents. This led us to our visit to Nigeria in 2018 where we fell in love with many of the clothing, we grew up wearing, but the recent trend of clothing in Nigeria seemed more sophisticated and evolved. The incorporation of different textiles, cuts, patterns, and designs inspired us to introduce these fashions to the African diaspora especially in the United States, where there was greater demand to express west African culture with a more upscaled approach. The idea of starting our own business was to provide a different category of apparel and provide a nuanced concept of clothing inspired by West African Traditional attire, made, and designed for various everyday lifestyles. We wanted a name that could stand on its own, represent who we are, and yet remain simple. Our premium kaftan represents tradition, and our attention to detail, style, and fitting provided for the superior trims. Therefore, our name was born, and we are “Traditional Trims Clothing”

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

We are Traditional Trims L.L.C., and our name speaks to what we a hope to provide our consumers, West African Traditional Clothing. We offer high quality, premium handcrafted, African clothing that is designed and tailored to uniquely satisfy every day, occasional, and professional lifestyles. Our brand is rooted in culture and seeks to target men of African Ancestry to fully embrace their heritage through clothing. Clothing has long been an extension of one’s identity and self-expression. Our platform allows patrons to embrace African cultural styles by selecting a wide variety of personalized fabrics, combined with contoured-to-fit tailoring. We believe that our production process, selection of premium fabrics, customizable designs, colors, sizing, and attention to detail is what sets u apart from other brands that may offer similar traditional attire. Many of the clothing brands on the market currently only sell select styles of African clothing. The traditional styles of loose-fitting “Kente” cloth or the “Dashiki” are still popular, yet outdated. Many Africans in diaspora are unaware of the evolution of African Traditional styles and clothing. We are proud of our modern approach to premium fabric selection, minimalist and chic designs, and various sizing options, combined with our online store for which allows access to customers globally. Curating a full scale business operation which sources fabric, manufactures clothing, and employs top tier talent to produce our clothing proved challenging in our early stages of development. Our dedication to ensuring a seamless customer experience and process suggested to us that we had to go back to our roots in Nigeria, and create the system that we wanted to see. We overcame our challenges by structuring our operations where we could not only source our material, but also control our production and supply chain, ensuring a seamless direct to consumer experience. Our customers have taught us the biggest lesson along the way, and that is to “listen”. Listen to what they like, what they want to see, in what setting they feel comfortable in their attire, and ultimately their experience with our process and customer service. We want the world to know that we are dedicated to providing premium quality, excellent customer service, and handcrafted designed clothing that is timeless.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Their are three cofounders’ of Traditional Trims L.L.C., Lewis Olaoluwa, Jamail Raji, and Ajibola Akinkanju. We all met nearly 20 years ago in 2005 at Georgia Perimeter College, now known as Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, GA. At that time we attended this small college with students from all over Gwinnett County, and Georgia at large. We instantly bonded through our shared mutual friends who also attended this college from various Gwinnett County high schools, and also through our shared first generation experiences of having West African parents. We would often make light of how we grew up, and often compared our experiences which formulated a much stronger bond throughout the years. We eventually separately went off to further our education at different universities, but we always remained in contact, even after college. From being young naïve adolescents, to purchasing our first homes, marriage, creating families, and starting a business venture with one another, we have always kept our friendship and brotherhood as the most important aspect of our success.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

As cliché as it may sound, we truly have grown our business from the grass roots up. We focused on developing our clothing product by first using our family and friends, and through there support came more people who were interested in our brand. Our strategy focused on West African communities within the overall African American communities. We realized that no other community could display the fashion in the way that our community could. We initially focused on Atlanta, Chicago, and the DMV area because of the rich cultural fusion that was occurring between native born West Africans and African Americans. We saw the growing assimilations amongst both cultures with respect to food, music, hair care and beauty, and fashion. We knew that the demand for more Afrocentric clothing far outpaced the supply, and we wanted to fill that void. We further expanded our market to Dallas, Houston, and New York, where we have created more awareness of our brand and have caught the attention of many who never knew we existed, or where they could find such clothing. We have been in very high demand for weddings, and other ceremonial occasions, and have expanded our brand to include attire that can be worn as an everyday style of clothing. We still pride ourselves on our interpersonal relationships with our customers which has been developed through many of the consultations we have provided. The positive feedback and word-of-mouth promotion has propelled our business forward in ways we did not expect to happen, but are extremely grateful for.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tradtrims.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/tradtitionaltrims
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/TradTrims
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/TradTrims
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@Tradtrims
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@traditionaltrims

Image Credits
Lloyd Mackayi Tosin Fashina