Underwear, especially lingerie, is a sensitive subject for most African cultures. Emalohi Iruobe, of the newly launched Nigerian Lingerie brand Aimanosi, tackles body shaming in Africa head on. She talks body positivity, empowering women and creating a profitable lingerie empire with Fashion Business Africa. 
FBA: Give us the backstory on Aimanosi
EI: While I was in Nigeria, I couldn’t find any underwear for myself. I went to so many places; I scoured Lagos trying to find underwear stores that carried products that fit me. The choices were either the open market, and you can’t try the underwear on, or a few stores that sell underwear in Ikeja, Opebi and Vicoria Island. So I decided to make some of my own sketches to create lingerie and that was how Aimanosi came about.
FBA: What do you think about the underwear shopping culture in Africa particularly for women?
EI: I think the underwear shopping culture is virtually non-existent. There is something about Nigeria and the way women are raised that encourages them to ashamed of their bodies. The culture isn’t accepting of being naked even in the context of “I am showing myself so you can give me the accurate measurements”. I think it is kind of a body shaming that we have picked up without even knowing that we did. This subtle body shaming also stems from a customer service problem in Nigeria. Lingerie stores are really small so there is no space, and Nigerian stores will not allow customers try on the underwear especially bras. These issues are complicated by the fact that there are not many options out there. So women wait till they travel abroad and those that can not travel buy whatever they can find and make it work. As a teenager, a few of my bras had to be taken in at the sides to make a better fit.
FBA: How is an emerging lingerie brand like Aimanosi going to address this sort of body image issue when it comes to lingerie shopping?
EI: The vision of the brand is to actually have stores with big open spaces where positive body image is promoted. With an overarching message that “There is no shame in your body and there is no perfect body size. You don’t have to be thin, fat, in between, curvy or whatever.” Part of the vision is to have these stores where the customer service is impeccable with sales assistant who are not what the media ideal of the perfect body is. Aimanosi will have an environment and an ambiance in the store where you come in and feel positive about yourself. We also really want to get to the point where it does not matter if you do not buy the product but you can try it on.
FBA: In terms of the specific products, how does Aimanosi accommodate the African woman?
EI: The general structure of a bra will probably never change but the thing that makes Aimanosi targeted toward the African woman is that we use material that is breathable. So nylon is not component of our products because nylon is really hot. Aimanosi underwear aims to use 100% cotton, elastane, polyamide as well as other materials that are fit for the climate of African metropolitan cities. We are also interested in finding bras that fit under the clothes you wear for example; our owambe bra it’s made of heavy lace and it looks good under your iro and buba.
FBA: How do you think a lingerie brand can make a difference in Africa?
EI: My goal for the brand is to be a company that caters to women; employing them, and empowering them. We have a social entrepreneurship arm where we are going to provide free entrepreneurship classes. We are considering a 2 or 3 day program where women can come and learn about entrepreneurship and create their own business. At the end of the program there will be a business competition where whoever wins will be a franchisee of Aimanosi and we discounted the product for them. We also want to have our own store because I think our store would model how we want our products to be sold.
Our major social enterprise is the Bra Recycle Program. This program collects gently used bras from our customers, launder and repackage them and donate them to victims of civil unrest in Northern Nigeria. Each customer that donates a bra automatically gets 10% of any item in the store.
FBA: How did you finance Aimanosi given that investors in the African fashion industry are mostly men? how do you sell the idea of lingerie to them?
EI: Wow it’s like you were with me through the process. You are right, all the investors are men. I was searching for a female investor or even a black investor but there were none that were interested. I found the best way to approach this is to focus on the bottom line. Answer the questions. Is there a market for this products? Are people going to buy this product? Can I make money from it?
FBA: How do you differentiate Aimanosi to investors?
EI: Aimanosi is different because the product is geared to Africans and distributed primarily to the African market by an African brand. There is a popular lingerie brand in South Africa but it is not African owned. So, for an investor, Aimanosi is an opportunity to break into a new market. It is totally untapped so we can do anything and in the next two or three years I am sure there will be competition in this market.
FBA: You spoke about the various obstacles to creating Aimanosi, what has been your greatest challenge so far?
EI: My greatest challenge so far in creating the brand is being able to cater to all the sizes; especially the bustier sizes. I have women saying “I love this stuff but you don’t have my size”, which is part of what we are trying to tackle. Stocking the full range of bra sizes is one of our main goals and we are working on it. A related challenge is that our factory wants to charge more for bigger bra sizes. We insist that you can’t make people pay more because they are bustier than an arbitrary norm. So figuring out pricing for the various sizes of bras is another issue for us.
By Kachi Udeoji
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