Feature Friday – Jubril Aliyu

What are your plans today after work, night out, movies, date night or Netflix? We can’t be so sure of your choice because it is definitely a fun day – you would rather unleash all the week’s stress. While you are preparing for whatever adventure you have planned for the night, let us begin the first 5 minutes with this week’s edition of our ‘Feature Friday.’ Yaaaaaay

We are excited to introduce our entrepreneur of the week, Jubril Aliyu of Mr JAY Couture.

Jubril Aliyu

Share a brief with us about your business

The business name is Mr JAY Couture. Mr JAY Couture is a unique home of men’s fashion, where we design, cut and sew men’s wears. We make traditional outfits, casuals and corporate wears for men.

Let us know the best marketing tool that has ever worked for your business

Well, so far, there has been a huge competition between referrals and social media. Hardly do we have walk-in customers because of our location, but then, we still have good people who have experienced our expertise refer us to other people, and, social media isn’t a stuff to joke about, it puts food on our tables, fam! I’ll likely say some more about this, just please read on.

Tell us your most enjoyable part of being an entrepreneur

The fact that I can lead and direct a whole team to achieve and perform various magic; being a leader isn’t joke, especially in our field, where you have to always sort things according to priority, so you don’t disappoint anybody. You have to be at alert and thinking straight, always. You don’t have the grace to be forgetful about anything, your brain just has to be open and working round the clock.
However, less often than not, the fact that I’m not working under anybody, I’m my boss, can at times be orgasmic. I’ve never loved to do things because I’ve been compelled or commanded to do it, (even when I don’t feel comfortable doing it), but not like I’m doing it because I’m happy to.

How has social media helped to promote your business

I can say that, partly, social media is what put food on our table; our office isn’t so easily accessible, or located on a roadside where we have our stuffs displayed for passersby and other road users to see and then come by to ask what we do and how we do it, so, we always have to keep pushing stuffs onto the social media, so we don’t starve.

What is the most challenging part of business you are going through currently

Eheeeeeeen, there we go….from my research of late, I’ve come to realize that it is not only here in Ibadan we experience customers or prospective customers price down our services, it’s almost everywhere. Everybody loves good stuffs, but nobody is ready to pay the price. Right from time, I’ve always had to deal with having customers give some kind of face (yes, I feel it even over the phone; texting or voice call.) when they hear or read the price of a particular stuff they’ve asked for. Some people come to you because they’ve seen stuffs you’ve done before, and they know it is you who can give them what they want for that occasion they have forthcoming, but, ask them to pay  so to have it as they want it, they go squeezing their faces like you’ve just taken the only meat on their food, it can be depressing for us.

At times, I kind of ask myself if our stuffs are kind of pricey, but, when I look at what we make, compare to what some others make, and I compare the price tags, I get even angrier and want to add some extra thousands for the next person who comes around to ask for this and that. Don’t get me wrong, folks, I know about ‘overhead cost’, so, it’s not so safe to compare my price to that of someone who’s somewhere else.

I can tell you that, we still do not get what our stuffs are worth if we go by their overhead costs. We only survive by having extra stuffs on the sides, like training and other stuffs.

Follow mrjaycouture on instagram for more products