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How I started grew my business from the scratch -Adenike Ogunlesi, Ruff ‘n’ Tumble founder

Mrs Adenike Ogunlesi has been widely interviewed on various media platforms, and several articles have been written about her but her story still serves as an ìnspiration to all. Her doggedness, business sense, and diligence are a few of the admirable traits of her personality. 
In reality, Nike Ogunlesi started by selling from the back of her car. Her brand, Ruff and Tumble stared from a car trunk.
Today, Mrs. Adenike Ogunlesi is the CEO of Gatimo Limited and is also the founder and creative director of ‘Ruff and Tumble’. She shares her business success story in this adapted online interview.

As an inspiration to a lot of young people out there, please kindly share your story with us.
Thank you very much. I started Ruff n Tumble because there were two or three things I was trying to do. Trying to, first of all, be financially independent, I wanted to have my own money. I also wanted to be able to serve to be able to make money and I wanted to prove those good things are possible to come out of Nigeria. Despite what you see, you have to learn to see what’s invisible, you have to trust what is the unknown because what you are trying to create, is actually in that space of the unknown.


I was a young mother with three children. I wanted pyjamas for my children. To my surprise, someone asked me to make for her kids, seven pairs, one for each day. And that thought suddenly came up in my head, she can’t possibly be the only one that has that need. So there must be a whole lot of women that have that need and so I took a whole bunch of pyjamas and took them to Playschool with my kids. Every day, I spoke to the mothers and told them that I had these beautiful pyjamas that were locally and very nicely made. There were N750, N950, and N1,200 at that time. 

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How many years ago was this?
Oh my God, it seems like another lifetime. But I started making these pyjamas in 1996 and it just grew from there. More mothers just wanted the pyjamas and one of the lessons I learned in life was ‘use what you have to get what you want’. So focus on the things that you have and the value you can draw from them as opposed to things you don’t have because that doesn’t take you anywhere. We set up our first store that was 4 metres by 6 metres in dimension. It was so tiny but I had learnt about Marketing. I had learnt about customer experience and I wanted to embed all of that into creating this brand called ‘Ruff and Tumble.’ From one little store, we went to five stores to 10 stores, to 17 stores, and hopefully, by the end of this year to 20 stores through an e-commerce platform that is very happy serving children with happiness as we say Ruff n Tumble, making kids happy because that was what it was meant to be. I keep saying that the lesson from this, is to use what you have to get what you want because what you find then is that you find creative ideas on how to get it done as opposed to constantly looking out of the window and saying, what am I missing? For me, that was one of my biggest life lessons.

What is your background like? What kind of family are you from?
I am from a polygamous family. My mother was originally Scottish but became naturalized as a Nigerian and so she lived here for 50 years of her life before she died. She was the greatest influence in my life, her values of whatever thy hand findeth, do it with all thy might. I grew up in a place called Ijebu-Ode, G.R.A Ijebu-Ode.

Really? One would think you grew up maybe outside Nigeria…
No, I didn’t, I was born outside Nigeria but I grew up in Ijebu-Ode until I was about 18. Life is about what you make of it. Where you are coming from should not determine where you are going, it is just another stepping stone to where you want to get to. You draw the values, you draw the beauty, you draw the lessons, you draw the experiences from that and you create where it is you want to go. I started working when I was about 18. I divided my money into 3, one part I put back into the business I was doing, one part I put into savings and investments and one part is what I eventually lived on. I cast my entire savings portfolio and in getting ambitious, I then wanted a loan and then I took my first loan. I’d never put myself under so much pressure because I had never owed so much money in my life and this was like N25 million. I was now borrowing. At the time, this was like 20 years ago, it was a lot of money then but I paid it back in 16 months instead of 18 months which was the timeline that I had. But it was a lot of pressure. I found that borrowing money helped me to become disciplined. I had to put some systems and processes in place and I had to submit to the authority in the business as well. So I get paid as everybody gets paid, I get a pension like everybody gets a pension.

You were paying yourself a salary?
Oh yes, I cannot not pay myself a salary. I cannot work for free because I own the business. No, hell no! But if you are going to run a business properly, you have to do that. You have to give yourself a salary and live within that salary. I am super grateful for the team that worked with me over the years to achieve that because you can’t do it alone as a business owner. You have to have a dependable team, that takes initiative, and that you can trust. I know that I have kissed some frogs in my life but I have also kissed some princes and princesses.

How did the name Ruff n Tumble come about?
Everybody asks me this and it was so easy. My neighbour at the time, Gbemi Sasore was standing outside her kitchen door. She was going to do a teddy bear festival. She asked me a question; did I know anybody that makes children’s clothes in Ankara? And I said, you are looking at the person and I said I am going to do it. She said what name are we going to put on your canopy? I said I don’t know really. She said what kind of clothes do you want to make? I said I just want to make clothes that children can run around in, rough around in. She advised that I just draw a drum with children tumbling out of it. I agreed and said, okay, let’s write Ruff n Tumble. No big headache with any consultant or focus groups. That was just it. The Gatimo group also has a manufacturing facility that manufactures for Ruff n Tumble, uniforms, face masks, and PPEs during the pandemic, we were able to pivot quickly when we made a million facemasks. I had never made a million of anything before in my life, you know, so that was an experience.

There is the cutting department, the panel inspection who oversees what we are producing, marking the clothes, and the quality assurance system.

Wow! It’s a whole lot?
Yes, it is, but this is what we need in Nigeria. We need a lot of manufacturing.

Did you study anything that has to do with fashion in school?
No, I didn’t, I didn’t study anything that has to do with fashion, to be honest, but I grew up with creativity. My mother had a business where she created adire (tie and dye) and so she made clothes out of the adire. I grew up making adire with my mother with blue hands, red hands, purple hands, and green hands from playing with the dye. All that creativity was around us so we grew up with adire table cloth, adire napkins, adire curtains, adire clothes, adire everything. 
I don’t know why I thought I could be a lawyer but that was my father’s dream for me, to be a lawyer but I wasn’t even interested. As a little girl, I used to take the fruits from our trees and try to sell them because we lived on two acres of land in Ijebu-Ode and you would have oranges, mangoes, cashew, awin (African velvet tamarind), and I will try to sell them just to make a little bit of money. I guess that was where I was honing my entrepreneurial skills without realizing it. I used to go to the market with my mother at a very early age as a child so I guess that was feeding me very deep in my subconscious I wasn’t even aware of it.
I believe in personal, continuous growth and development. I have always believed that you can only teach people how much you know so you have to be able to grow to a higher version of yourself as you progress and as your life unfolds, otherwise, everyone around you will not grow beyond what you know. You have to keep knowing more so that you can teach more.
In our flagship store where we produce locally, you can’t tell that the products there were produced locally. All those shirts we produce, the trousers we produce, you can’t tell. We always set the production standards very high. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s doable. The younger generation wants everything to happen overnight. It doesn’t work like that. It’s a process. Success is a process; it’s a journey.

Which outfit are we buying today?
You are the one buying today, not me. This is our ‘tiwa n tiwa’ (Our own local) brand where we embrace our Africanness. There’s never been a better time to be black and to embrace being black. I wanted to tell a story of us, where we come from, and where we are going. Where we are going is a limitless opportunity. It’s a white canvas but we have to write that story. We have to embrace who we are and write that story for ourselves.

In building a business in Nigeria, I know how tough it is for a lot of people, can you tell us the challenges you faced with building this business for over 20 years now?
Over time, the challenges have been different and my perception of the challenges has become different. It’s a challenge but also a growth possibility. It took me a while to be able to frame it like that. But once I was able to frame it like that, there was a little bit more ease with the way I then addressed it in looking for the solutions to overcome whatever those challenges were. Most of the challenges we had at the time when we initially started, for example, were getting the banks to take us seriously. They didn’t take us seriously. Then, there was the challenge of people, finding the right people. As an entrepreneur, being able to communicate what your vision is with those people so that you can have buy-in and then they can now work with you to actualize this dream and grow this dream. I needed to learn how to communicate; I needed to learn how to be patient; I needed to grow myself as a person to first muster self-mastery and leadership before I could then begin to think of leading a team. Then, there are the systems and processes that you have to put into a business. You have to hire consultants and you don’t always get the right consultants. So the systems and processes will only help you to build a business that will outlive you and that was always my desire. 

A lot of people currently in Nigeria especially the young people because of the way things are happening, a lot of people are feeling like they can’t build a business. What would be your advice to them? 
Is it easy? No! If you live in Nigeria and work in Nigeria, you have the best mental muscles that any human being ever grew in their entire world. And I honestly believe that Nigeria builds your mental muscles like no other country in the world will because you are thinking on your feet 24/7.

The question is not that it is not possible, the question is what are you passionate about? What are you willing to commit yourself to? Anytime there is a challenge, it’s an opportunity to grow a solution to an idea, find a solution to a problem, or grow yourself as a person. Something is always going to happen. If you have framed it as ‘oh it is Nigeria, it is never this, it is never that,’ that is what you are going to get. But if you create a framework that says, okay, this thing is a challenge, how do we approach this? When I wanted to take a house in the GRA 24 years ago, people said I was crazy, to take a whole house in the GRA just to sell children’s clothes.

Someone said to me, who do you think you are? I must add strongly, you have to be very careful with the people you hang around with, the people that hang around you, the people that are speaking into your ears, speaking into your life. You have to be careful of the people you surround yourself with, that is so key. You know, we have to be careful. Yes, it’s difficult but nobody ever promised you a life that there would be no challenges.

Besides, in a life where there are no challenges, life is not worth living because how then would you stretch yourself, how then would you grow yourself? It’s tough and I know that it’s tough but you’re tougher. That’s the real truth, honestly. You have to go on that journey of finding out who you are and being true to yourself, not necessarily because this person is doing it, I am going to do it. No, don’t do that ‘me too’ stuff. What is it that wakes you up in the morning, that gets you excited? What makes you happy, that you don’t even want to go to sleep because you are so excited about it? What it is that you want to do, that’s what you put your energy into.

You get up every day and you do it. You do a little at a time, a thousand steps, you take one step, two steps, three steps, and before you know it, time passes, you grow, and the business works. You need to have a proof of concept for that business. If you don’t have a proof of concept for that business and you are sitting down saying you want to do this, you want to do that, you will be living in a fool’s paradise. The younger ones are so lucky to have the internet. The people you are looking for are two, or three clicks away from you, find them. That person is always looking for the way, and when you keep looking for the way, the truth is, the way keeps opening up itself to you.


Seek and you shall find?

(Laughs) Exactly, that is what I was going to say, you took the words right out of my mouth. Yes, seek and you shall find but in your seeking, be authentic, be sincere, be genuine, want it for the right reasons.

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