By Tope Babatope
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Start up cost:

             N100,000

Advertising:

Word of mouth, materials on display, personal contact, complimentary cards etc.

Why it is a good business:

Everyone wants to look good at any point in time .Everyone has a taste for a particular thing or the other . Be it style of dressing, just name it. Some go for English dressings , some for native attires. Some both.In the category of native dresses one can use ‘ankara’,also oke ‘, damask and a dire to sew any type of design that suites you. Out of these, adire is the easiest one can produce but very popular  specially in the south west of Nigeria, however the popularity is far beyond the shores now. Meaning a good market. Adire is produced by tying and dying or batik of fabric cloth with African motifs or various designs. Some sew adire fabric into “old school”, native dress or Buba and so on.

Skills Necessary/ Staff Requirement:

The person starting the business is enough to do good business until it expands when it may require more hands.

Equipment/ Materials Needed:

Chemicals- caustic soda, hydro sulphate, dye colours,fabric- 100% cotton, hand gloves, nose mask, needle, tread/ twine,bowls, stove, pot, kerosine,stick, lining (rope) flat surface, wax, (white) foam.

Start up:

You can only start up the business after you must have gone for a training in the act. A training of six months will be enough to set anyone on a good soft landing for the startup of the business. When you have a place to operate from it definitely saves you from looking for accommodation money, especially when you can still manage where you are living. The chemicals and equipment you will need for your production include caustic soda, hydro-sulphate and dye, these you can get at a lower cost , your purchase depends on the quality you need. Other things you need include, fabric, a yard is about N800, you need gloves, nose mask, needle , twine, bowls, stove, pot, wax and a piece of foam.

Our source said when buying cloth you must ensure you buy 100% cotton to avoid an easy wash off of chemicals from the cloth. On production process, there are two types of adire, tying and dying and batik. Their names originated from their methods of production process. Tying and dying is the process by which cloth is tied and dyed with desired colours, while batik is the use of wax to achieve desired design, you can produce the two types through pouring and deeping methods. On batik, you  will first draw your design on the fabric, wax the designed area ,use foam to soak the wax and apply it to run the lines. The wax will prevent the dye from touching certain areas. You can now pour the dye on the fabric or you deep the fabric into the dye bath ( bowl).

You will need a stove to melt the wax , when you want to apply the wax on the fabric the wax must not be too hot. Before you can get your desired fabric you will need to de- wax with pressing iron and paper, by using iron on the cloth.

Business start up investigation revealed that the caustic soda is responsible for opening the surface of the fabric to allow the dye penetrate into the fabric while sulphate is for fixing the dye in the fabric. The dye colours are for staining the fabric to the desired taste of the designer or producer. The hand gloves are meant to prevent the hands from being affected by the chemicals while the nose mask is to prevent inhaling offensive odors. The need is to stitch on the motifs before tying while the thread is for tying.

Our source explained ” the three bowls you will need are for mixing the caustic soda and dye, with a small warm water, then pour the warm water and add another water depending on the quantity of the fabric, after tying , spread on a flat surface to allow the chemical spreads on the cloth evenly. The moment it is spread on the floor, after oxidation,it will change to the expected colour . You may be dying green and be surprised that it’s yellow but after oxidation it will turn to the original colour.

Pour a clean water into it and continue to change the water until it stops colourising the water now you can get a clean water.

Before loosening the fabric keep for about 20 minutes then loose and wash. Investigation said that you can make as much as a profit of 500%

Bottom Line Advice:

It’s always good to start dying from the lightest colour. Anybody going into the business should not see himself or herself as a producer alone but also a designer by making clothes out of it.

You can design and sew too. You must try and make the name first. It is a very lucrative business

moreso that many Nigerians are going for the attires now. See this as a good opportunity to expand your horizon.