Kalkidan Legesse - Founder & CEO - Owni

 

How to change the shape of business, in our headline today I say that Kalkidan is the Founder of Owni, in fact to date she is the founder of 3 businesses that centre around ethics and morals and are based around justice and fairness, which is a core part of her being. During our interview Kalkidan gives us an insight into how NGO’s work which is eye opening and how working for one shaped how she does business today. We learn about her unique business model at Sanchos. Her thinking around pricing would be a game changer if applied across a wider audience.

I read recently (in Clare Press’s new book Wear Next) that Ethiopia is now the cheapest place on earth for labour for the fast fashion market and wonder how this will change the shape of Kalidan’s ancestral home as it has done in all the countries it has spread to in the global south.

Looking for new ways to do business? Read on.

 

 

D: To start I like to ask the same question as I find it fascinating to hear the influences in your life that have shaped the journey you are on. Where did you grow up Kalkidan?

K: That’s a hard question to answer because I was born in Ethiopia but my family migrated to the UK when I was five so I grew up in the UK but whenever anyone asks that question I wonder which part of your life is the most influential in determining what your character is and what your experience is so I guess the simple answer would be Reading in the UK but that’s not where I am from.

 

D: I guess that all of your life experiences influence you.

 

K: When do you stop growing up?

 

D: Exactly. What would you say your early influences in life were and what inspired the direction that life is taking you now? Also, where there any early fashion influences?

 

K: Recently I was part of a BBC documentary series called ‘We Are England’ and the producer asked my parents how I ended up in fashion? Their response ‘oh she used to do this when she was really young, she used to pretend to be running fashion shows and liked doing sketches’. These were things I hadn't logged in my conscious memory, but I guess had logged somewhere. My parents are my earliest influence, they have really strong ethics and morals based around justice and fairness. Which I think is a result of how they grew up, which was during the Soviet reign of Ethiopia in what was a tumultuous period, there was also a civil war which was resolved with a new government. When they were young adults, similar to the age I am now, they migrated to the UK with two children, myself and my older sister and lived the life of asylum seekers which really highlights injustices in the world. I grew up with heavy speeches at the dinner table and with a really strong sense of some things are right and some things are wrong and that justice is important. It's the most important thing really for the human experience and the human condition and I feel that's my biggest influence.

When I started my early career, I applied that thinking to fashion because I was interested in development from a justice perspective. When you look at international development and look at poorer countries who need to develop their economies and build higher incomes and more stability for their population, I was always interested in how that's achieved. Then when I started working for NGOs it became clear to me that that isn't achieved well through the non-governmental sector. At the same time I learned about fashion, I learned how fabric is made, I had no idea about the process before that, but saw people weave fabric from threads on wooden looms and found it amazing, thinking, ‘wow that makes so much sense’, I had never even considered that aspect before. What really stood out to me was that those people were earning a lot of money, comparatively, earning almost ten times the amount an average Ethiopian person would earn, and my thought was, why are so many NGOs dedicated to raising income and why are they doing random projects in random places, with zero accountability when there are clearly industries that can generate really good value for people. That's when I became interested in fashion as a product because, when it’s done well it is a way to really honour skill and craftsmanship, labour, creative intelligence and knowledge, that's what led me to fashion. 

 

 

D: Was it while you were studying your first degree that you went to Ethiopia and saw this side of things? It's really interesting what you say said about NGOs. I can see that your experience with them has informed the way you work.

 

K: I think that's what social entrepreneurship does, it tries to drive social value growths, environmental protection, environmental value growth but through business, and because it's business it has built in accountability and built in measures of success, whereas social work sometimes doesn’t have that.

 

D: Because they do their project and leave, whereas you are continuing the work.

 

K: What tends to happen is that lots of organisations do the same project and then they all take benefit for the changes without quite accounting for the impact. Which means it's really inefficient and really unjust because huge, huge, huge sums of money are being misspent.

 

D: So what happens when they finish the project and move on?

 

K: Oftentimes it means they are warping industries too. I'm not a pure capitalist and obviously capitalism has problems but you tend to do a good job of supply and demand. The problem lies when, for example; one of the projects we worked on was a water resiliency programme in the southern nations and we were doing a lot of research into how you build more resiliency and we found out that although wells were being built the people were being charged for it, something like a quarter of a cent, a ridiculously small amount of money, but because most of the people who lived there weren’t earning any income at all it was an absurd amount of money for them because it was out of their reach. So, it was impractical, but that's what the Funder, EU Aid wanted to build, so they end up building dozens more that no-one could use.

 

D: That’s really sad but also really enlightening for me, I didn't know any of this. So how do we change that going forward?

 

K: Africa pays twice as much in debt repayments for every payment it receives in aid, and a lot of aid is tied to military support. Change needs more just relationships on the international level. Luckily Africa is developing a pan Africanism on most things so the reliance on aid from the West will lower over time and hopefully better relationships with trade will develop over time.

 

D: Why did you choose politics and economics for your first degree? I understand your MBA because it fits beautifully with all the work you are doing, but politics, economics and philosophy as a starting point feels very different.

 

K: My degree title was politics, philosophy and economics with industrial experience in Spanish, and to answer the question is it’s because I can't choose (laughs). I want to know everything, try everything and do everything.  It was a mixture of being interested in politics and strategy in particular which I still am. I hope one day my career will take me back to strategy. Also at the age of 18 it meant that there was a freedom in not committing to something fully.

 

D: You owned a store called Sanchos where did that name come from and what led you to set it up and move from doing pop up to bricks and mortar?

 

K: The name is like a nickname, a name my parents called me, Sancho or Sanch at home, as most of my family do. It originates from home and is descriptive of chubby girls who are strong and have a of bit fight in them, which means they are the type of the people who tend to get that name. I thought that as it's something that I think reflects me well, I thought it would be fun to call a fashion brand the same without knowing what the brand would become. The name was decided during a taxi journey in Addis Ababa in five minutes, as we needed a name for the domain and URL. I like it and most people also really like it plus our logo is a lioness, because I'm hugely motivated to empower women. It made sense in 2014 but right now it seems a bit dated, of course there is so much we still need to do, and of course there's so much injustice and inequality because of gender, but it’s 2024 why are we still here? Why is there still such a gender pay gap? Why is there still such a political decision-making gap in every way? I feel right now, I wish it was a bit more radical, because at the time it was #girlpower go for it and right now I'm fed up with the lack of change.

 

D: I think it’s a great name, it sounds Spanish, does it have a Spanish origin?

 

K: A Mexican film my parents saw called Pancho El Sancho was really popular in Addis in the 80s (1988) and the funny character Pancho was ridiculous, he was a psychic and he ate a lot and that’s why it became a descriptive name for people who eat a lot. It's an affectionate name not critical.

 

D: As you said your logo was a lioness which depicts a strong female force. What led you to set up Sancho's?

 

K: In 2014/15 people were still using the excuse, that there's nothing from sustainable brands or what can I do, there's no option offered, or that option doesn’t exist or they had a real complete misunderstanding of the impact of the fashion industry. What we wanted to do was to put everything under one roof so that consumers could make informed decisions about how their money was influencing climate change and product development and product use. We wanted to have the conversation around, who makes your clothes, what impact your shopping decisions is having in the world, whilst connecting with the brands and putting them into one place so people could make a holistic lifestyle choice, and holistic lifestyle shift. That was why we set up the business the way we did and it's why we opened the store. From a personal point of view we, (Vidmantas and I) had just left university which is a time when you are trying to figure out so much about who you are and what you should do, and I think it gave us a root to our identity and allowed us to creatively express ourselves, inform ourselves and educate ourselves and discover who we are in a way that was really aligned and sharp. Over time we took a much more a strategic approach to the business and a more market led opportunity. We always knew that people should think about the impact of their choices, who you vote for, what you eat, and obviously you can't reorder everything, but those who can should and it's important for us all to consider what options we have. That has always been a core value mine and Vidmantas’s it was a fulfilling experience for us, it was nourishing and rewarding. Having a physical space, a place in the community and a role within the community helped us get to know who we were as young adults.

 

 

D: What problems did you face building that business?

 

K: Inexperience was a challenge, a lot of people are afraid of business because they think you need to have really specific characteristics to succeed, that you need to be a certain type of way. That's true to some extent, as you have to be comfortable with risk and uncertainty, but beyond that I think it's a function of what you've experienced in the past, and most people who are successful in business either come from the industry or they have networks, where they belong to a family or community where that type of business is communicated. But we are alone and away from our family and didn’t have much work experience, marketing, sales or business experience, and I think that that learning curve was huge and prolonged, so that was a big challenge. But I think every person going into business will experience that to some extent. We were definitely affected by having restricted budgets, when we set up Sanchos it was with our student overdraft with something like £1,000. We tried to get a loan but the bank refused. Running a business with no money is challenging.

 

D: Did they give a reason why?

 

K: They said the loan was too small and that we didn't have an experienced enough team, but I know lots of people who have smaller and bigger teams and less experience but that was their reason. I see it now with people who are starting companies I see them trying to reckon with the reality of trying to create a business with no money and it's impossible. It’s important for people to learn that they can spend time getting money to do their business and that that's an OK and possible way for them to do it, but we didn’t know that then.

 

D: You have ethical and sustainable pillars that you adhere to with your work can you tell us what they are?

 

K: Fair Trade as 2 words and the way we look for that is through 3^rd party accreditations like the Fair Trade Foundation the WFTA or Fair Wear. Not all companies can afford those accreditations and should that be the case, we will look for evidence of the bargaining power of the worker. Perhaps it’s an artisanal product and the craft person is the person selling it, or it's a small collective but they have Fair Trade principles in place, like prepayment so that's what we look for in those cases. Then we look for natural materials that are organic, because the fashion industry uses around 10% of the worlds arable land and it's very water intensive. Organic materials on the other hand use rain fed irrigation, they don't use pesticides and farmers are not tied to the debt cycle of fertilisers and seeds of inorganic production. Also when the garments are worn they are less likely to be toxic and when they are discarded they are less likely to be toxic too. We also look for recycled materials, if they are using a synthetic material like polyester we will look for a recycled one. Then we try to choose pieces that we know people are going to wear at least 30 times, which is essentially a rejection of trend, and an embracing of capsuling. We really want to sell things that we love and feel really nice to wear. A lot of what we sell we have sold for five years and we carry it because we know that eventually people will need that exact thing again and they'll need it over enough time for us to hold on to it. 

 

 

D: You also had a unique way of pricing in store can you tell us about the pricing points you had and why you did that?

 

K:  I sent a marketing email out during the first Covid lockdown with some products that had arrived and were absolutely beautiful and very ethical, the perfect type of product. I got an email back from a customer saying, great product can't buy it it’s not in my price range, I’m leaving your newsletter. That really hit me, because yes, not everyone has the same budget. People shy away from this problem in the sustainable business field, this idea that is unaffordable to most saying instead, save enough money to buy it or they say don't buy it.

    But there's still that fundamental problem, that in order to live more sustainably, it’s the consumer that has to take on the extra costs and the true reality is, that we all sit in different places, where for some of us that’s doable and for some people it's not. So, should those people not have better quality products are going to last too? Terry Pritchard wrote about shoes and how expensive it is to be poor. He talked about the cycle of buying and replacing things using the example of shoes. His character buys a pair of shoes, they get damaged they have to buy another, they get damaged, they need to buy another so that that first £10 pound purchase becomes £50 pounds over the course of the year, so there is a cost to poverty. Is it not the responsibility of businesses too alleviate that in some way? I would say it is. If you have more money you should pay more money, you should pay more money for everything actually. That’s why instore we had tiered pricing on a range of our products, not on everything because it's really dependent on what things cost us and what we can afford to discount and we can't afford to do that for everything but on the things we can, we give customers an option to pay either a cost price, or a cost plus staffing and marketing price, or full price, which covers the profit that we will make from the item too. The impact that has is that it makes people think about the category that they actually fall in to and a lot of people realise that they have more than they think they do. Of course there are a lot of consumers who will say sustainable fashions really expensive, but what they actually mean is, I don't want that item, which are two different things. I had a customer who is a councillor, once choose the lower price. Now councillors are not paid a huge amount of money, but usually to be a councillor you have to have at least the luxury of time. She had chosen the lower price but came back and said ‘actually I reflected on it and I think that I can pay the higher price, can you choose the high price for me?’ We have also had some people over pay, saying let me give you more money to offset the cost of the lower price. We have also had lots of people who have selected the lower price and because of that felt included in a company that they agree with ethically and now own something that otherwise they might not be able to access.

 

D: That’s amazing an amazing way to be inclusive.

 

K: You would think that's how more services should work, right? Fashion is obviously not an essential service but it is a really great tool to communicate ideas. 

 

D: How have the last few years affected you? A lot has happened, big world events and changes in how the UK does business.

 

K: I think that’s such an important question to think about and reflect on because while you experience it you don’t reflect on it. We now have clear visibility of inequality and I think the good thing about that is that it's created a new social discourse where people are way more critical of those who have power, wealth and privilege. It is absolutely necessary for us to affect the balance of power and privilege but experiencing it is challenging. I feel the experience a lot of people have is that so much change has been outside of their power. Lockdowns, Covid, Brexit, global war so much of it is out of our power that it can feel disempowering, yet in smaller pockets I felt more empowered. More empowered to trust what I feel and know is valid. A positive of the lockdowns we lived through was that suddenly we had access in rooms at an international level that were inaccessible in person. Making it easier to be interactive with spots and spaces that had more power and influence in different areas than before and I think that helped teach me the real scope of my work and thoughts and beliefs.

 

D: Do you still hold your swapping events? Tell us what initiated that.

 

K: It was the awareness that there's too much fashion out there and such a mismatch between what people want, what they have, and where things are. The swaps are a really great way to get people to share what they have, bring them in, and keeping garments in use. 

 

 

 

D: You have built this out further by creating an app called Owni. What is your aim with the app?

 

K: What I know very clearly is that we've sold products to people that they are not wearing that are sitting in their wardrobes. We often think about the problem of over consumption at the point of the consumer, that the consumer has bought too much. But actually businesses have sold them more than they needed.

I wanted to create a way to connect brands to the second life of their clothes, because brands have the most influence of what's produced and created. They also have the most information about their products which will help inform the end life of the items and how they are recycled. I realised that we had all the core systems there to build that and we only needed a platform to engage people and a way to do it efficiently and at scale. We could have said we will buy back your items and resell them. The problem with that is supply and demand again and the efficiency of how much and at what volume we could do. Plus how do we find the potential customer. Using peer to peer people can buy and sell between themselves and potentially be more efficient and be of more value.

I believe that businesses need to produce less I believe that degrowth is absolutely necessary, but it will be really hard to convince businesses to do that when that essentially challenges the longevity of their models. What Owni does is that it gives them a way to continue to service the things they have already sold through this peer to peer platform and generate revenue after the fact be that two, three years after the sale, over and over and over until that item can no longer be bought and sold second hand.

Then when the item reaches that end point within a circular ecosystem we know where it started, we know who purchased it, we know how it's changed and we can take all of that information and connect it to recycling facilities so that they can recover items in bulk and then produce new. That's the mission and it should be possible. The challenge is getting enough coverage to be effective, but I think we're going to get there and we've have some really exciting traction with independent brands who are already engaged. Plus we have some really really huge companies who are interested too like M&S. We built the app by fundraising.

 

D: The app has been up and running for a while now.

 

K: Yes, people can buy and sell on it like they can on eBay, Vinted or Depop. We also have the recycling integration ready for use. I am so optimistic of the potential of the circular eonomy to really create the world we want to live in. There is so much potential in underused items. One of my favourite things to do is to go to recycling centres. There is an amazing one here in Exeter and I love seeing the potential of the garments there, thinking if only the right person or the right company was looking at that waste, something amazing would be created from it. It's a really exciting opportunity.  

 

D: What drives you Kalkidan, what is your mission?

 

K: I think the world could be better and I think it can. It can be scary and sometimes it's difficult to see what you can do. But fundamentally I think things can get better so it's better to do something about it than not to, and I guess that's what drives me.

I hate seeing injustice and I hate experiencing it, and I hate when I'm exposed to it through the people that I care about and know. It clicks something in my mind and soul and makes me want fight.

 

D: How do you see the future?

 

K: With OWNI I think we can encourage the worlds biggest brands to take responsibility for over production in an effective way and in a way that transforms how people interact with what they own. I think that people, powered with the in depth details of what they've purchased, where it's from, its carbon footprint, who made it, it’s material composition and the ability to style it will allow them to be huge curators of what they own and take real passion in that. I'm really excited to create that way of interacting with our things, that will be amazing.

I spend so much time focusing on all kind of arbitrary metrics, like percentage growth rate, or social media engagement. I'd love to do all of that whilst also having time to read a book a week (laughs). 

 

Links

 

Web            Owni

                    Sancho's

 

Instagram    Kalkidan.Legesse.Mekuria

                    Owni.App 

                    Sancho's

 

LinkedIn       Kalkidan Legesse