Arthur Uche is a trained lawyer, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of ‘Beyond Clothing’, a garment company with its headquarters in Aba, Abia State. He established the business after practising as a lawyer for only one year. In this interview with ZEBULON AGOMUO and GODFREY OFURUM in Aba, the entrepreneur explained why he left the law profession to go into full time garment production, the challenges, the staying power, and his determination to take the company to the global stage. Excerpts:
Kindly walk us through the experience that gave birth to Beyond Clothing?
Well, I will say that it is the orientation I had as a child. My mother used to be a seamstress. She learnt the skill in Aba before we moved to the North. So, we had sewing machines in the house and we also go to her shop to help her out. So, I’ve always known how to do a few things with a sewing machine, but I wasn’t really into sewing. But something happened when I was in my fourth year in the university. I was a unionist and president of the Law Society, University of Jos. We organised a protest and I was rusticated from the University and locked up in prison for a while. So, while we were locked up, I was obviously no longer a student at that time, I just thought about how my life was going to turn out assuming I was no longer going back to school; so, I made profound decision that if I don’t get back to school, I will go and learn how to sew and if I learn how to sew, I will become a tailor, but my life will not be wasted. Eventually, we were released and we went to court to challenge our rustication. I finally graduated because the court freed us. But when it was time for me to go to Law School, I was not admitted, because I stated in my application form that I was rusticated at some point, due to my involvement in school unionism. The Law School application form is structured in a way that you have to give detailed information about your past.
So, I actually put it there that I was rusticated and charged to court for rioting, and of course, Law School refused to accept me. I came back to Aba and decided to be a tailor. My elder brother is a tailor and I joined him and became his apprentice.
After one year, the court quashed all the allegations against us and because we were not convicted, my colleagues and I were eventually admitted into the Law School. I went to Law School, Enugu, but by this time, I had made up my mind that if I graduate, I would not practise law. In the process of the apprenticeship, I saw the opportunities in garment industry. I saw the opportunity in the garment industry, because I found out that the players in the industry in Aba are not so educated people. They didn’t know how to scale and translate their business. I thought I could make a difference, even though I didn’t have the money. I wasn’t looking at what others were doing; I was looking at the future.
Upon graduation, I went to Enugu to serve and immediately I rounded off, I faced my tailoring business. But in-between that, I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to do, because the money wasn’t really there and my colleagues were pressuring me to try Law practice that what I was pursuing might work out. And I attached myself to a chamber and started practising law. I did it for just one year and I never liked it. I hated practice. I am not sure I lasted up to one year, because before one year, I was going back to my tailoring and after one year, I walked up to my principal and told him that I was calling it quits.
He said no, I should stay. I told him to allow me try it for a year and if it did not work out that I would be back. So, I rented a place at 32 Market Road, Aba and started “Beyond Clothing” with one sewing machine; one embroidery and we were there for 16 years.
But because I understood that I needed to grow, I was able to enroll at Enterprise Development Centre in Lagos, a sister school of Lagos Business School. I did a course in Entrepreneurial Management Structure and all that. After that, I came back and tried to implement all that I learnt in the centre and my business took off to another level. So, after 16 years, we bought this property (the factory) and then we built just one-storey and our money finished and we moved in and kept pushing. After that, we raised money again and in January this year, we started raising the factory again and hopefully by June we should be through.
Along the line of taking the decision of going into tailoring and starting the business, were there challenges at that initial stage?
There were so many challenges. There was a time I wanted to run away from Aba. For about 10 years, we were in one flat. We just couldn’t scale, it was depressing and I thought I was doing all that I needed to do, but I was not making much progress. During the kidnapping saga in Aba, I made up my mind that I was going to leave Aba. I bought an embroidery machine, figured out where I was going to live in Abuja, started looking for a place to rent, but my Pastor spoke to me and said I shouldn’t go.
He tried his best to convince me to stay. He told me that God has called me to stay in Aba. So, I listened to him and said let’s give it a trial. I think it was then that I discovered how to market on social media that things changed and we started getting a lot of orders outside Aba and that changed the whole game and we were now able to rent about five flats in one location. After that, we raised funds to buy our own facility. It is easier now to scale up. It used to be difficult in the past. Access to funds was the major challenge in the past. But now, with better understanding and also better mentorship by those, who have done it in the past we have access to funds.
The operating environment is challenging in terms of infrastructure, especially power. How have you been running the factory, particularly with the issue of electricity?
You see, when people ask me this, I laugh. I laugh and I say I don’t know about other industries. But this industry that I know, electricity is not our problem. For all the years that we have run Beyond Clothing, 98 percent of the time, we have run on generator. From small generator to Lister engine. As even now, electricity has improved in Aba, but it hasn’t really benefited us at ‘Beyond Clothing’. First, we don’t get as much power that we require and even when it comes, if we are operating at full capacity, we will not be able to use it.
First reason is that we need to have our own transformer, which we are planning to buy. And because we don’t have our own transformer for now, the transformer that feeds this area is not strong enough to give us consistent 3-phase power.
And if we don’t have 3-phase full power we will be unable to use it. So, we will shut it down and use our generator. Even if we get it, electricity now is not cheap. Comparatively, diesel is cheaper to use in Nigeria than outside the country. Let me give you one example, my friend runs a small eatery in the United Kingdom, and he has a maximum of six staff, the place is not so big, it’s a small restaurant and his electricity consumption for a year, if you translate it to Nigeria’s Naira, it’s about ₦6 million. Our diesel consumption, as big as we are is between ₦4 and ₦5 million per month.
Electricity is not cheap anywhere in the world, it’s a cost; so, you have to figure out how to organise your business and plan it in such a way that you have to cover that cost. Our thought process should be how to systematise our operations so that it will not become a troubling part of our business. Most successful businesses in Nigeria run on generator. For me, power is the least of our problems.
Read also: Beyond Clothing: Pushing the frontier of going local
If power is not a challenge to garment makers or tailors, what is the real challenge faced by them?
Our major challenge in the garment industry is knowledge and exposure. Most of us, who run this business, do not understand that we are doing manufacturing. There is education and know-how for manufacturing. For example, manufacturing is not a one-man business. Garment manufacturing is a labour-intensive business. One person cannot do it, ten people cannot do it, twenty people cannot do it; it runs on the back of intensive operation. And in that intensive operation, the entrepreneur must make out time to study and understand all of those components that come together to make you a successful garment maker. For example, governments in Nigeria have so much money to buy machines and deploy them, but every single time those factories fail. If there’s any government that is intending to do this now, immediately they come to me, the first thing that I will tell them is that it is going to fail. Machine does not guarantee a successful garment factory. I remember when a former Governor of Cross River State invited me to look at his garment factory, and advise him on what to do. I spent about 2 hours with him and I told him that the factory would crumble. So, it is not about machine. A state government in South West also invited me in February this year. They wanted to empower their youths and so they set up a huge factory, but when I looked at the machines, I told them that all the machines in the factory were useless, they cannot work. They asked why? I said that is not how to set up a garment factory.
I said the first thing you do when you want to set up a garment factory is to ask yourself, which market is ideal for my product? Then you test your product. If you are getting market for that your product, then you’ll start looking for the right machines that will produce those products.
You should also note that you are competing with China, Bangladesh, Turkey and India. These guys have extensive knowledge of the industry. So, you have to understand your market; it is market-driven, it is not machine-driven.
Once you understand that this is my market, I have a share of it, whether it is zero percent or one percent, then you start deploying resources to that direction and start acquiring knowledge in serving that market. And as you are serving that market, you are growing gradually and expand to other products.
And that is the reason why Aba is successful with garment manufacturing. Those individuals that you are seeing understand their market. They may not have a larger vision, they don’t understand how to scale it, but they understand the market.
If you go to Ngwa Road, you will see somebody, who has been sewing Boxers for the past 30 years, that’s his market and he is still sewing, he has buyers from Togo, Cameroon and other parts of West African countries, even outside Africa.
They understand their market, but they don’t know how to compete with the Chinese, which is the missing link. If they understand how to compete with the Chinese, they’ll beat the Chinese.
With your understanding of this market, how come you are not impacting it on others to enable them scale and earn more and increase Nigeria’s GDP?
I do. I don’t know if you follow me on Instagram? Check my Instagram page Beyond Clothing.ng. Once in a while, I make out time to teach, to share my experiences. I travel a lot to China and every time I go to China, I’m in factories. I am working with them, learning from them, understanding things and sourcing things and I share a bit of that with them. Last year; I did a masterclass programme. However, this year, I’ve told them that I will not organise a masterclass, because we are trying to expand. So, we are building. You don’t talk about your projects until you realise them, then you talk about it. I am very open to people, who are close to me, I am open to them, because the market is large. We have a population of over 200 million people and about 90 percent of what we wear is imported.
Let’s say that the textile industry is dying in Nigeria, we shouldn’t bother about textile, it is not a major employer of labour. Textile industry is advanced, it is technologically-driven. You can go to a factory as big as my own, all the floors put together, they’ll not employ up to 10 people, because of automation. We don’t need it. Those machines run 24 hours without human interference. Nigerians make so much noise about textile industry and government had pumped so much money into it and it has been failing.
We need to tell ourselves the truth and shift where we have comparative advantage, which is in cheap labour. And that’s what Bangladesh did. Bangladesh moved to garment and left textile. Textile was a second thought. They focused on garment and today, they have the biggest garment factories in the world.
Garment production represents about 80 percent of their foreign revenue. Majority of their textile comes from China, because I see them; we source materials from the same place. Their focus is on garment production, where they have comparative advantage in cheap labour. Nigeria has a cheaper labour than them, because of the state of our currency at the moment, but I don’t think that we take advantage of what we have.
What do you think will make it possible for Nigeria to develop the garment industry?
Our leaders are not visionaries. I had the privilege of sitting down with the immediate past Governor of Abia State on what we need to do to develop the industry. But after our meeting, he just set up garment factories. What stopped him from investing those monies in the man in Ngwa Road, who knows the market or those in Kent or create an ecosystem, where they can thrive. Let me give you an instance, the President of Ethiopia, when he wanted to revolutionalise that industry, because he knew that his people didn’t have that knowledge, he attracted the Chinese to set up big garment factories in the country and that is one way to spur up that revolution. And that is why China became industrialised, because Americans and Europeans took their factories to China, taught them the process and they learnt in those factories and today, they are setting up their own factories and they are now leading. So, what the Ethiopian President did was to bring in those Chinese and I read that he had monthly meetings with them, where they discuss all issues concerning the factories.
So, if we have a commissioner for Industry, if we agree sitting with him on monthly basis, we will begin to solve our problems. It might not even be money, it might be ideas, it could be in education.
One of the things that had helped me is that I had an opportunity to access the defunct Diamond Bank scholarship for businesses to go to the Lagos Business School to learn. I was lucky, I didn’t pay any school fees. That was where I went to study Management. Many times, we think it is money, but I found out in my case that money was not the major factor. As soon as I acquired that knowledge, it helped me to access funds. There are consultants spread all over the country. Nigerians are intelligent.
Beyond the provision of enabling environment, people expect government to provide them with grants. From your experience, do you think government should provide financial incentives to support private businesses?
When former President Goodluck Jonathan was in power, he had a programme called “YouWin” that was giving out grants to entrepreneurs. Then, we were a small business and I applied, but I wasn’t given. Some of those I know got N8 million each; in fact, everybody around me got and I cried in my heart. But for all these people close to me, who got these grants all those businesses have shut down. I have never received a grant from any government; we’ve been borrowing from commercial banks.
Grants make entrepreneurs lazy, because they don’t feel that sense of responsibility that they have to pay back. I remember those days when Access Bank people will come and threaten me, when we are one or two months late to our payment. We will abandon everything to make sure that we pay them, but with grant, you will not be able to build that kind of character. But I think, if the Aba man is able to know better, in terms of management and machinery, he will scale and do better.
What is the staff strength of your factory?
We are 150 staff today, but we expect that before the year ends, we will be up to 500, because what we have upstairs is bigger than our current space.
There is this call by tailors in Aba for the government to set up a cluster for garment makers, do you think such a cluster, if achieved, can boost the industry?
It should to an extent. It should be able to spur a lot, but before the cluster, if I were government, I’ll put education of the tailors first. The man, who is educated will find his way around anything. But if you put him in a beautiful house, where he never spent money, he might not scale. So, I’ll put education first and intensive exposure.
How do you quantify the activities of Beyond Clothing to the economic growth of Nigeria?
I am not an economist and so do not know how to quantify that, but we are impacting our community positively. My neighbour was telling me that when people pass our facility, they get excited about what we are doing here. A lot of people come here everyday in search of work and we take the much we can. We have a hostel for our staff. We have a programme where we take only indigent children. So, if you have somebody in the village or even in Aba that is economically deprived, his parents cannot pay for their education, but he or she wants to learn skill, but also cannot pay, bring such a person to us.
We will take such a person and start him/her with a stipend of N35,000, provide free accommodation and start training the person. If the fellow is smart and learns how to sew well, in 3 months we’ll jack up the stipend and if you are okay and you keep improving, we’ll continue to increase the pay. That is an exciting thing for me. And when you calculate the salary of 150 people, you I’ll know the effect on their families. Talking about the real economic impact on Abia State, we go for exhibitions and in the last exhibition, we got a massive job to supply a company that distributes to brands in the United States of America. We are working on the memorandum of understanding (MoU) and once we are able to meet up with the check list that they gave us and it passes, they intend to be buying one-40ft container every two months from us.
So, the fabrics are here and we have also brought in some new machines and we are able to meet with international garment factory standards. We are hoping that before the end of the year or at the beginning of 2026, we will start exporting to the US.
I can see that you are more into branding. Do you also do fashion clothing?
We are expanding now and every floor has what it does. We are currently focused on branded clothes. However, our next floor will be for fashion. So, we already have a team for that segment. Jumia people were here recently. We have a pact with them. They want us to start selling on Jumia, but I told them to wait until we build our capacity.
What’s your advice to youths, who are looking for quick money but without skill?
I will say two things here. The first, when I was coming from China, I noticed something that about 40 percent of those flying with us to Nigeria are Chinese who see opportunities here and are coming to tap into such opportunities. But when you are travelling to the United Kingdom, about 40 percent of those flying are Nigerian youths, who want to “japa” and they will never come back. The Chinese, who are coming here are seeing opportunities, while our youths are leaving, because they are not seeing the opportunities. This shows that Nigeria is a gold mine, but we don’t have the skill and knowledge to harness the opportunities. I started like every other tailor in Aba. I started from Kent in a local backyard with manual sewing machine with no money and by learning the skill, we are ready to export.
My word to the youths is that the opportunity is here. The opportunity is in empowering yourself, be patient and learn how to be valuable, by empowering yourself with skill and knowledge.
