We recently connected with Titilayo Olurin and have shared our conversation below.

Titilayo, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I had the idea for my business when I was in a dark place. It was early 2022, and I had just started working at a new job – one of three in the span of only two years or so – and I was exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally. Not just because I was constantly going from one job to another, but also because everything in my life seemed to be going so horribly wrong. I had had a most depressing 2021 – emotionally, financially and in every other way imaginable. I felt so unlucky, so unloved, and was beginning to question my very existence. I wondered if my life was going so wrong because I was such an awful person who deserved all the bad that came to me. Needless to say, I thought poorly of myself and watched helplessly as my self-esteem nose-dived. Then, one late evening, as I sat in the office, feeling sorry for myself and reluctant to return to my lonely and depressing one-room apartment, I had this great idea. It felt like a light bulb that went off in my head. Well, it did not start as an idea per se, but as a strong feeling. A feeling of awesomeness. I began to feel awesome rather than awful. I was not such an awful person, as I had led myself to believe; instead, I was awesome. It’s what I told myself, and that feeling has stuck with me since then. That was how I conceived the idea and inspiration behind my business, That Awesome Brand.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a writer first, before anything else. I do all kinds of writing – business writing, speech writing, content writing, scriptwriting, copywriting, and ghostwriting, you name it. I am also a model, or I like to think I am. I get modelling gigs occasionally. Although there hasn’t been anything major in that regard, I am hopeful, because modelling has always been a big part of me and it’s something I really like to do. As a child, I often stared at the glossy pages of magazines, looked at billboards and watched TV commercials, imagining that one day it would be me on them. Of course, that has not happened yet. But I know it will. I guess you can say that my love for fashion modelling, in some way, has influenced my choice of entepreneurship. I wanted to do more than modelling, and I thought to myself: What if I own the brand or business that puts me on the pages of magazines, on billboards, and TV commercials as a model rather than scrounging around for modelling jobs?

Also, for as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to own a business and run an empire. That has been my biggest dream. So, even as I worked for others, whether as a writer, an editor, a journalist or a school teacher, I always had it at the back of my mind that I was going to own something, a business that I could call mine.

So, I started a clothing line in 2021, which unfortunately did not work out. But when I had the idea for That Awesome Brand the following year, I knew deep within me that it would be different. “This is it!” I told myself. And there has been no turning back. Even though life has not gone quite as planned, I have made a conscious effort to work towards my business every single day. Whether it’s planning, brainstorming, creating, designing, budgeting, purchasing, or printing, I always make sure I do something to improve on my business.

Like my previous business, this is also a clothing line but a different kind. My focus, for now, is loungewear for women (young and old) and anything that goes with it. Just like you have gym wear and gym accessories, my business is all about loungewear and loungewear accessories.

The idea is to make women and girls look and feel awesome in what they wear. The idea is also to create choices for these women. They can choose to wear the loungewear formally or casually. It all depends on how they style the clothes. Imagine being able to wear a piece of loungewear on a dinner date or to the office or to a party! Yes, with That Awesome Brand, you can do just that. The idea is for women to be able to wear the same loungewear to the mall on a Saturday night and to a meeting on Monday morning. Again, it all depends on styling. Women can also choose to buy individual pieces such as a top or a pair of pants or buy tops and bottoms together as a set. They can choose from a variety of colours, because I love colours. Fun and vibrant colours. And most of all, they can choose from many different positive affirmations inscribed on the clothes, which will always remind them of how awesome they are. My business presents a lot of choices, and I cannot wait for my customers to start making these choices. It’s still in its early stages, but I am very positive about it.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Well, like I stated earlier, the idea for my business came when I was in a dark place. I could have brushed it off, especially as I had neither the financial means nor the mental, physical strength to pull it off. But I kept at it. I have kept at it since the very day the idea was conceived till now. I’ll admit that it has been a struggle financially, since I do not have any kind of financial support from any source and I have to solely fund the business. In spite of this challenge, I am determined to keep going. I only look at the big picture and not the immediate challenge.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

So, creating a new product for my business entails the following – coming up with an idea for a text, designing it and printing the design on the products. While I come up with the texts and share my ideas on how I want the texts to appear and how I want them to be arranged with a graphic designer, who in turn creates designs for the texts, I cannot print by myself. This is because I do not have the resources to, so I find people who can. But it has not been easy doing that. Some are more interested in getting paid than in actually getting the job done. Others just do a shoddy job or do not do the job when they should or do something that I do not particularly like. Perhaps because they do not quite understand my vision. I need people who share my vision and can do exactly what I want and how I want it. Because I do not want to settle for substandard products and I only want the best quality of products for my customers, I have had to change printers repeatedly in order to find someone who would actually get the job done the way I want. As a result, I have spent so much money, time and energy printing and discarding products over and over again. It’s a big manufacturing challenge that I have had, but again, I am looking at the big picture. I will do whatever it takes to get it right, even if it means failing and starting over as many times as I have to.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @thatawesomebrand

Image Credits

That Awesome Brand.