Meet Kanyana, 25-year-old designer on creating affordable fashion for young people

As the fashion industry continues to see new talents engaged from urban clothing to luxury brands, Nadine Kanyana has made it her vision to create affordable ready-to-wear and made-to-measure fashion for young people. The 25-year-old says she was inspired to start her fashion business after noticing a gap in the market where designers were focusing on people of a certain income and young people such as students and those with first-entry careers who didn’t earn much to afford such clothing. “As a child, I loved sewing and grew with that passion. When I finished high school, I found a school that trained people with basic sewing techniques but also how to make a business out of it,” she said. It is in 2019 that Kanyana introduced her fashion brand dubbed “Kanyana World” to the Made-in-Rwanda market offering different styles of clothes both for males and females. However, she said that she struggled with the bookkeeping aspect of her business until she joined the BK Urumuri Initiative. The initiative of Bank of Kigali in partnership with Inkomoko offers a platform for entrepreneurs to apply and 25 innovative businesses are selected to instantly gain access to six months of assessment, training, and consultancy. The participants get a chance to enter a competition to secure zero-interest loans from BK for their business development. Kanyana said that through the training, she has come to understand the importance of online marketing and how to keep track of business operations and transactions. With six full-time and four part-time employees and two trainees, Kanyana is able to implement whatever she has learnt along with her staff on a daily basis. “Besides the fun learning environment we have, we got to learn the essential parts of businesses that we, entrepreneurs, often ignore. We got back to the basics of customer care, inventories, etc.,” she explained. Kanyana is confident that the BK Urumuri Initiative will help her boost her business, in terms of increased online clientele where she gets a big section of her customers, and provides enhanced services and products to them. You can visit her social media platforms such as Instagram and her website.

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Meet Kanyana, 25-year-old designer on creating affordable fashion for young people