Fisayo Longe’s journey wasn’t exactly what she had planned. She wanted to study law, but when she didn’t meet the cut-off, she had to wait it out or make the most of the setback. She chose the latter.

Her mother had just one condition: if she was taking a gap year, she had to get a real job. And that was exactly what she did. She became a gap-year student at KPMG, wowed them so much that they decided to put her on a retainer work-study scheme. Fisayo was an auditor at KPMG and studied accounting at the University of Durham, but things took another turn. She quit her job, got kicked out of Durham, and went to London to focus on her own thing: fashion.

Fisayo has always loved fashion, lifestyle, and travel. And so, as a traveler, she’d always go fabric shopping whenever she was in a new locale, use the fabric to make unique clothes true to her maximalist, main-character style, and blog about it on the blog she created in 2012: Mirror Me. Her followers and community wanted in on the tea, and she saw a demand. She could sell her style.

In 2016, she started Kai Collective with an £8K loan from her mother and made about 10 clothes in the first collection (she doesn’t recommend this) and hoped that her 40K followers would translate into sales on launch day. Fisayo could feel it—her life was about to change. However, what happened was the exact opposite. A sales funnel would predict that you’d get about 10% of customers from whom you’re pitching to. 10% of 40K followers should have been 4K. Fisayo made only 23 orders at launch. “It was depressing.”

But Fisayo did not let that stop her. Rather, she persisted and looked at the cracks—what could have gone wrong? A plethora of things were wrong with the launch: Kai Collective did not have a unique selling point. They were too generic, and if the big dreams Fisayo had in her head were to materialise, that had to change—and fast.

Photo by Moeez Ali

The first change came with their viral print mesh dress, Gia. Everybody wanted a piece of it. Kai had found her unique selling point, and it was “MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY.” This spirit instantly permeated how Kai Collective operated. Their social media became 100% organic, the flow of their emails prioritised community, and—oh, how—they built the most ingenious and excellent campaigns, with notable mentions being the “Sale” Campaign and the “Get the Bag” campaign around the best-selling London Bag.

Despite the brand having its fair share of bigger brands trying to rip them off, things are looking amazing for Kai Collective. From 2016 till date, they’ve done about £6M in revenue. From only £11K at launch in 2016 to £2M in 2024—a huge feat considering that only 4% of startups do £1M yearly. One big leap for Fisayo Longe, one bigger leap for Black women daring to dream worldwide.

You can watch the interview here:

Fisayo Longe On How A Fashion Startup Became A Success

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