Meet eight year old Nifemi an internationally recognised kid entreprenuer

I am an eight-year-old girl who loves making and wearing accessories, my business started as a hobby, I love art, craft and fashion. I realized I loved wearing accessories when I was about 5 years old, so I decided to try and make mine. My mum got me the materials I needed and that is how I started.

I made my first sale to my neighbor at the age of six, I was surprised when she wore it to a party and said it was really pretty. My grandma and aunties also placed orders for different pieces then I thought I could make a business out of this. I sat with my mum and came up with the name for my brand – LOVELY BEAUTIES by Niffy.

Lovely Beauties by Niffy is a young, vibrant, growing business targeted at lovers of beauty and fashion accessories. I currently have our everyday wear fashion jewelry and hair accessories which is infused with our traditional fabric- Ankara which helps to showcase our cultural heritage. I am also adding skincare to my range, everyday beauty needs such as hand-creams, lip glosses etc. I recently launched our lip shimmers with vitamin E that helps to moisturize your lips. My pieces are versatile and can be dressed up or down, it is targeted and wide age group because it can be used by both young and old, female and male.

Since I started, I have sold several pieces to different customers’ home and abroad. My Instagram page gained traction after my showcase at the first KENT fair where I made close to N40,000.00 in sales. I was encouraged by this and started adding more lines to my business and looking for more innovative ways to make my accessories.

The first opportunity came when I was invited to have my pieces sold in a store that sells clothes for children, I had to work hard to meet up with pieces needed at the store especially when they needed to be replenished. This was my first time signing a contract, it was amazing.

On children’s day last year, I was honored by the Amazing Amazon initiative and received an award for being an amazing Kid entrepreneur. Shortly after this, sometime in July 2017 the JuniorityTV team in the USA reached out to me through my Instagram page. I had noticed they had followed by page for a while now. They stated that they loved what I was doing and wanted to do a skype interview with me. The JuniorityTV team are a vibrant YouTube channel interested in promoting young entrepreneurs and wanted me to be a guest to their show. This was a super exciting time for me because this would be my first international recognition.

My mum and I discussed the interview and we agreed it will be another great opportunity to showcase my skills. We had several emails back and forth on ideas and details of the shoot, agreements were also signed on disclosure. (This made me feel like a very big girl). They were particularly fascinated about my long term goals which includes teaching other young entrepreneurs basic skills they can use to grow their businesses.

Fast forward to the interview day, I was nervous but the team where very supportive. They had asked that I should not be prepped for the interview to avoid situations where I memorize the questions and then forget. However, I was given an idea of the questions and had given some thought to my answers.

As the interview progressed my confidence grew, it was a very interactive and fun session and I enjoyed every bit of it. One beautiful morning, the 5th of November 2017, I got an email from the team informing me of the release of the interview. I was extremely excited so were my parents and brother. The You- tube views grew from three to over four hundred views in three days! This was a great milestone for me, this significantly affected my social media page as I grew to over three hundred followers and had so many order placed within a week of the interview. I had previously had orders from Canada and had more from the UK and the US after my interview.

It has been an amazing journey and I am still learning and acquiring additional skills, I try to improve my skills by doing a lot of research into how my pieces can be improved, this also helps creativity. My mum also enrolls me for skill acquisition classes during the holidays.

I will share some simple steps to make your own lip balm because it is my favorite thing to create.
Care needs to be taken when handling hot wax! My mum helps me out here.
The Ingredients you need are: Vitamin E, Bees Wax, Castor oil(optional), Coconut oil, Essential oils and coloring.
Step 1 – Place your beeswax and coconut oil in a glass bowl
Step 2- Pour water in a saucepan – ensure the water is half of your bowl and not more, place the glass bowl in it
Step 3- Allow water to boil and watch the wax and coconut oil melt
Step 4 – Add the essential oils and other ingredients to the wax
Step 5- Pour in the clean lip cans
Step 6 – Allow it to cool
That easy!