Another Abuja Fusion Event

The Fusion lifestyle event is a quarterly event held at the BMO arena of Abuja, Nigeria. It showcases all kinds of vendors from food vendors to lifestyle and entertainment vendors, and it also allows these vendors to market their various unique products to a wide range of customers all in the same day. Vintage Colette regularly in this event because it allows us to network with other entrepreneurs, engage with a wider customer base and also carry out more research on who our customers are and what they really want and need from our services.

For this quarter, preparations started a week before the May 29th Fusion event. We started by choosing certain fabrics that we were going to use to produce all of the apparel to be sold on that day. After the fabrics were chosen, we checked our customer records from the last Fusion event and put into consideration all requests and product suggestions from those we interacted with at the last event. Then we proceeded to design the garments based on the current weather conditions so that we wouldn’t end up producing anything that would not be suitable for the hot and humid Abuja weather.

At such large events and expos, we often find that our smaller sizes are never in demand, so with that in consideration, we started producing the sizes that we were going to sell at Fusion.

We decided earlier to produce 110 garments as we did during the last Fusion event in March. During that particular March event, we sold out of almost all of our products. For the May Fusion event, we ended up producing 117 garments in a span of 6 working days by working round the clock….yes we do have a highly organized and effective team in place to do that. While some were handling production, others were handling quality control. Then our remaining staff would pack up the clothing and taking full stock of all the exact items we were taking to the event.

Just when I thought we were all sorted out, I realized that our store mannequin wouldn’t work for the majority of items we wanted to display at our stand due to a small malfunction with controlling its balance So we had to borrow from a good designer friend of mine who wasn’t going to be at the event. Two hours to the closing time we realized that her staff had made an error by giving us the wrong set of mannequin hands and we had to quickly dash to her office to make a last minute swap.

We then went over our entire checklist while the last batch of production was going on for the last set of garments to be packed, which were about seven in number. Electric steamer…check, Extension wire….check, Mannequin…check, receipts…..check, Customer information booklet…check, dressmakers pins…check, measuring tapes…check, petty cash box….check, writing materials…check, clothing rack…check, petty cash…check, clothing tags and tagging gun….check, hangers….check, jewelry and accessories for styling the mannequin….check, Carrier bags…check, point of sales portable machine…check, office mobile phone…check, and finally the last batch of awaiting apparel, garments111-117…..check.

We closed our doors at 8:30pm and were scheduled to be at the venue the next morning by 10am.


The next morning, we all convened at the venue and set up our stand earlier than most vendors. We were all excited as we met other new and old vendors and talked about work and the economy. After all was set and done, I decided to head home and wear my fabulous outfit for the event. Customers are very visual and want to relate with the product well, so wearing a item on the mannequin wasn’t enough. My team all had to wear our brand to market the products better. And guess what, the first customer was there within a few minutes after setting up our stand. I got back from my house just in time to meet up with her and discuss her review of our products and she was quite pleased that I was very interested in her validation.

Fast forward to an hour or two later, the hall was buzzing with people but only a 50% of its usual capacity. A few of our old customers came by and said hello to us and other vendors as well. Sadly, some of them left without buying anything this time around. When I finally asked one of them, she said what almost all the vendors experienced on that day, “there is no money anywhere, the economy is bad, therefore I cannot afford to spend, so I just came out to socialize.”

I left my post with my team in charge and went on research only to realize that the rest of the vendors were experiencing the same thing too. Sales were quite below average that day, but we knew that it won't be a permanent situation and we still needed to forge forward.

So, I lightened up and entertained a few friends of mine, family with food and drinks and enjoyed the weather. It began to rain around 5:00pm but we stayed and enjoyed the event, packed up at 7:30pm and said good-bye to the organizers.


As we opened our doors for business two days later at our office, we discussed on ways to stay afloat during and after the economic crunch facing us today in Nigeria.