By Chisomo Phiri
In general, a clothing brand – like many other businesses is a matter of building emotions around it.
Emotions are often mentioned as key sales and retention factors in many research studies too. Customers become loyal to the brands that they feel bonded with.
As found in the research by Forrester from 2017, both behavioural and emotional metrics help growing businesses and constitute driving force in increasing retention.
In Malawi,cloth branding business sector is one of the most important sectors from a job creation and economic contribution perspective, and for Harold Simosha,22, founder of and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Spider Web clothing, sustainable cloth branding is a key to make more money in life.
His business approach is to incorporate fabric branding such as t-shirts,caps, uniforms and many more.
In a separate interview, Simosha who is currently in final level of his Bachelor’s degree of Accountancy at the Malawi University of Business and Applied science (Mubas), recalled he started of dreaming about having a brand a long time back but Spiderweb cloth branding came in existence in July last year.
“When I was young, I was found writing my name on my clothes with ink and that to me was something great.
“As I was growing, I was printing a name on t-shirts but unfortunately it was not being printed the way I wanted it to be,” he recalled.
He added that Sometimes he could consult graphic designers to design something for a print out and that became costly.
“Come last year I joined graphic designing and because of passion it only took me a week to master adobe photoshop.
“We were advised to come up with a name for your designs to be easily identifiable.
“That was when I decided to use the word spiderweb (the name spiderweb came when I was in form 1 because I was known to be someone of so many creativities and talents like pencil drawing, writing poems, singing among others),” said Simosha.
The creative designer revealed that he spent the whole night creating a logo for his graphic designing services and something reminded him about his past and the dream I had been keeping and decided to turn this into a clothing brand.
He said, apart from his self-motivation, he has been for so long inspired by Hayze Engola’s clothing brand “KNQR” and seeing how fast it has grown in the market hence his dream to achieve the same.
Said Simosha:” Brand is doing quite good and I am always determined to reach as many people as possible.”
He added that SpiderWeb is for everyone, young and old, male or female.
He said the brand is used in clothing line as it is printed on different clothes per customer’s need such as hoodies, t-shirts among others.”
“Apart from that, the brand is used as business name for spiderweb graphic designing services,” he said.
Simosha did not left mentioning lack of finance resources as one of the biggest challenges resisting him to penetrate into the market and make the brand known within and outside Malawi.
In addition to that, he said the adoption to changing in customer demands is another challenge as diversity and inclusivity are crucial.
” When customers see themselves and their values reflected in a fashion brand, they are more likely to identify with that brand like it is an extension of their own self-expression,” he said.
The young and creative designer who makes K40,000 per month through his brand products sales appealed to the government to support young people like him who are creative and innovative to achieve their dreams through innovation and entrepreneurship in as far as Malawi 2063 agenda is concerned.
To those who want to start similar business like his, Simosha, encouraged them saying it needs business ideas, marketing skills to keep them alive in the industry.
“I want to take this opportunity to encourage my fellow young people to take a step and have an impact on Malawi’s economy by doing different businesses and and not only depend on school in as far as Vision 2063 is concerned.
“Spiderweb has different symbolism and meanings,to me, seeing how the web is spun shows a certain degree of creativity,” he urged.
He concoluded that new customers can access his products by contacting him on 0886009400 (WhatsApp or call) or visit his Facebook page SpiderWeb merchandise.
