#WCW: Honey Ogundeyi CEO Fashpa.com

IBG is all about celebrating women and each week we choose one woman as our Wednesday crush. For the longest time we’ve been crushing on Honey Ogundeyi the founder and CEO of Fashpa.com, Nigeria’s Leading Online Fashion Retailer, and here’s why…..

She’s built/building a strong NIGERIAN brand

In a relatively short time Fashpa.com has established itself as No1 Fashion Online Retailer and has been described as Africa’s ASOS for the similarities in their model and strong use of social media. The company offers an extensive variety of international and local clothing brands as well as its own brand all of which come at affordable rates to the Fashion Conscious consumer, something many Nigerian women are pleased about.

Being a leading lady in many respects

As many know, the tech industry isn’t necessarily a sector proliferated with women. That’s what makes Honey and Fashpa’s story very exciting. Honey’s success, aside from her keen sense in fashion, is possibly also due to her depth of experience within the sector as an internet and brand management expert with over 10 years experience. She was previously Industry Manager at Google, where she was responsible for the commercial portfolio, strategy development and online advertising execution with clients across all industries Nigeria. Before joining Google, she worked at Ericsson and prior to that worked in consulting at McKinsey & Company in Brussels and Johannesburg. She has been recognised as a One Young World Ambassador, a Junior Achievement Nigeria Ambassador and is leading figure in Nigeria’s Internet and eCommerce Industry.

She is a Problem solver

We love it when a women sees a problem and then fixes it! Thats exactly what Honey did. Faspa was birthed from a place of frustration of having limited access to fashion in Nigeria. she then used her expertise to fix the problem, the benefit of which millions of women are enjoying today.  ‘Ten years ago, I came back to Nigeria after university to complete my NYSC before starting out at Mckinsey & Co. I wanted to purchase a pair of shoes and the options were basically super expensive at a brick and mortar store or cheap knockoff version at an open air market and I ended up ordering a pair abroad. I remember thinking there must a viable option in Nigeria if you don’t want to sacrifice on price or brand and still want a cool pair of work shoes at good price. Since that time, I gained a lot of experience in technology, retail and business and moved back to Nigeria. The problem of accessing trendy clothing at great prices still existed .However this time the Internet provided a unique opportunity to solve it at scale and build a fashion brand that would serve a fashion conscious customer. As they say, planning met opportunity – it was the perfect time to start Fashpa.com’ says Honey.

She is passionate about making an impact

In a recent interview Honey says ‘I am a firm believer in hard work, being driven, and never giving up. I am driven by the desire to leave an impact and contribute to the growth of the African Economy. Entrepreneurism is a journey and you learn a lot about yourself, business, team work, the fine art of balance but mostly its gives you an opportunity to be able to make a wider impact in your community as a whole’. Nothing beats that!

She is steadily creating opportunities for other women

We’ve always belived that women create new pathways for other women to follow and thats exactly what Honey is doing. ‘I am driven by unusual conviction to succeed and over achieve in all areas of my life…..I also have a pet passion for raising the quota of women in technology, so at Fashpa.com, we have a super team of women leading the way’…..

She is both candid and honest about the ups and downs of her start up journey

One of my FAV qualities in a woman is honesty. Honesty about where you are and how uncertain you are of the future, because lets face it, how many of us aren’t scared sh**less when facing our dreams square in the face. I read one of Honey’s posts on her blog and I completely empathised and although I haven’t quite started my start up…..I knew the feeling…. ‘Finally startups are hard because they are violent places, not ray rice violent, however building a team under the auspices of hyper growth, bootstrapping, below market conditions pay and promise of a brighter tomorrow, means you will lose some people along the way. Sometimes this will be good people. I was on linkedin yesterday and the amount of people Konga has lost to Jumia and the other way round is just as I said, violent’.

For being a Nigerian woman working out this work life balance thing one day at a time

‘In a place like Nigeria, as a solo female founder people will also make judgements on what that working hard should mean for you, sometimes this people will include members of your own family who will say “dont work to hard on this thing oh” as if  one is expected to treat this as a side hobby and quit and become a housewife at the first sign of difficulty and other statements that are just specially created to make your startup life even harder’…. ‘The honest answer to that question is that it’s not always easy maintaining that balance especially if you are a perfectionist like me and I want to excel in all roles. I deal with a lot of guilt! At the end of the day family always comes first and mine have been a source of strength and inspiration in doing what I do. Running your own business can be a very lonely journey, I spend the time when am not working with my family’.

We wish Honey and Fashapa.com the best in 2015 and the future…..

Source: excerpts of interviews/quotes were taken from Ynaija, Honey’s blog and AFK Insider