Thursday, 28th March 2024
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The Slimesistersng! We took our love for toys and craft and turned it into a business!

We are 4 girls who are friends, aged between 7 and 12 years who love to hang out/play together and create fun play tools for kids. Our names are Osaivbie Olaye (12 years), Carmella Ebhojie (10 years), Adesuwa Olaye (9 years) and Audrey Onyia (7 years).

Who are Slimesisters?
We are 4 girls who are friends, aged between 7 and 12 years who love to hang out/play together and create fun play tools for kids. Our names are Osaivbie Olaye (12 years), Carmella Ebhojie (10 years), Adesuwa Olaye (9 years) and Audrey Onyia (7 years). We have known each other from childhood and our parents are family friends.

What is Slime?
Slime is a toy product, much like play dough or plasticine, but much stickier, gluey, squishy and stretchy. It can come in different colours and textures and kids love to play with it.  Over the past couple of years, it has become hugely popular amongst kids aged between 3 and 14, and even some adults find the process of making the slime, and the finished product highly therapeutic and a fun play activity to share with their kids.

How and when did you come up with the idea?
Our infatuation with slime was triggered late last year at the Nickelodeon kids festival held in Lagos. we attended and had such a great time, especially playing with the slime and watching the adults getting sprayed all over with it! Soon after it became a rave amongst kids everywhere, and we started begging our parents and aunties/uncles to go online and buy some from UK or US based online stores. We got gifted a couple of jars of slime, and we started wondering how to get more. Apart from being expensive, these foreign bought slime, didn’t always meet our expectations, so with the help of our mums, we started researching online how to go about making our own!

It was a fun process, for us kids especially, but we made such a mess and got into loads of trouble with our parents!! And after several hit and misses we came up with a stable formula for making different variations, colours and types of slime!!

When did you start the business?
The Slimesistersng business story was shaped during one of our many playdates in our homes, where we were trying very hard to convince our parents to buy us more slime-making supplies. Our parents were understandably reluctantto as they had collectively spent a lot on buying us the supplies we needed in the past. We then came up with the idea to make some slime and sell it and from the proceeds of that, buy ourselves more supplies! We discussed this with our mums and they thought it was a great idea and they agreed to support us for the last time by buying the supplies we required, for us.

We made a batch of slime and sold to some of our friends and classmates, and, voila! We had the money we needed to buy more supplies. At this point our mum and Aunty agreed to be our Manager and she started helping us promote our business, and as a result we started receiving orders for more slime. We were also invited to showcase our slime at the NMA shopping party at CIRCLE Mall Lekki Lagos. And all the kids that came by were so happy to buy from our stand.So far it has been very exciting for us , as we have been fortunate to have hosted a couple of birthday parties, sold and marketed our slime to so many kiddie’s events and all that; and to teach other kids how to make slime.

We also were recently invited to the annual ‘Rock in the Park’ programme hosted by Joshuaville Church and co-ordinated by Zapphaire Events (one of Nigeria’s leading event planners) to host their kids at our slime making table, where we got to teach kids how to make slime for themselves. Though it was hard work, we loved every minute of it.
 
What products and services does slimesistersng offer?
We pride ourselves on being a business run by kids, making fun play tools for kids. That, in fact, is our slogan ‘Made for kids by kids’. Our vision is to share our love for making cool play tools such as slime, with the world and get other kids excited by it too! We presently offer a wide range of colourful slime options, we have multicoloured slime, slime with glitter, scented slimes, slime with foam balls etc., which can be purchased as party favors/ party pack fillers or for individual use.
We also offer slime making table set ups for kids events such as birthdays, playdates, kid themed corporate events etc. how it works is that, We equip the kids with a slime making tool kit which contains all they will need, and they get the opportunity to make the slime for themselves! This has been a super hit with the kids. And for the super slime lovers who want to get immersed in slime, we can provide a slime pool for your event!We also have a summer school programme targeted at schools in the Lagos area, where we sign up kids interested in learning the science of making slime!

 
Challenges experienced
We have come to understand over the past couple of months that, running a business is generally not easy. Most especially for us kids, as we are constrained by not only lack of funds and operational infrastructure but also by physical constraints such as conflicting school timetables as we attend different schools in Lagos. We usually try to schedule the production of slime over weekends or public holidays, to allow us ample time to study, do our chores, or other stuff. Though this has been tasking, with the support of our parents we have learnt how to attain a work-life balance, so that no aspect of our lives whether academic, social or otherwise suffers.

Also, learning how to work as a team was so hard in the beginning, as we all have different ideas and strong opinions. This made it difficult to achieve much, but now we better understand how important it is that we work well together so we can meet our customer orders.
We are fortunate to have a manager now, who is helping us put together a framework for our budding business. And we hope that in no distant time we can attract investors to support us in our future expansion plans.
 
Dreams and aspirations
Where do we see ourselves in the next 5 years? Being the youngest CEOs of a Toy manufacturing company, we have loads of cool ideas about this which we hope to showcase to the world soon. We are also presently working on something exciting for the confectionery industry, which we hope to roll out by Xmas.As the Slimesistersng franchise grows, we hope to expand our summer school programme, and have clubs where we can share our Toy making ideas and knowledge, such as the science of making slime with other kids like us. We would also have vocational centres where any child can come in and learn how to make or create something fun, like toys, games etc.Finally, because we have been taught by our parents the importance of giving back to the society the Slimesistersng team have formulated a plan to support other less privileged kids in actualising their own dreams, one slime at a time.

 

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