David Lewis (Nigeria) | BA Global Economics and Management | Class of 2021
At the very centre of this year’s fall where the trees of Bremen-Nord stand tall amidst the cold northern air, leaves of red and gold lay strewn across the ground while a pandemic looms overhead. The campus is quiet, as it had been in the past few months since lockdown. Any and all forms of on-campus events had to be put on hold in accordance with the regulations set by the German government. One such event made strategic changes instead, and managed to take place while still keeping within the rules during these very trying times. Lockdown day 213 - David and his team, at student-startup Made by Lewini, put together an online-fashion showcase against all odds. Larissa and I decided to sit down and have a chat with David to better understand how exactly this strapping and ambitious young man managed to keep his spirits high throughout the very bleak pandemic and the process that went on behind the scenes. Here is that interview.
Larissa: Could you tell us more about the fashion show? Tell us a little about the inspiration behind the pieces that were premiered.
David: Yeah, so the fashion show happened on the 14th of Nov here on campus. This was actually our first ever fashion show. Prior to this, Lewini always only showcased its designs at other fashion shows around the world. To have the show on campus was just more convenient because otherwise we’d have to pay for a place downtown. And we also wanted to make it easy for the models and the team to get to the venue. Planning started in September and we had roughly 6-weeks to get everything done up until the show itself. Initially, people were meant to attend the show and we had an events team to help with that but due to the change in social distancing regulations we had to scratch that. We mainly invited prospective buyers, suppliers, friends, people from jacobs as well. The first few people I reached out to were prospective buyers. I’d been talking to owners of local clothing stores and clothing distributors in Bremen. We wanted to invite them to come see it upfront and live and possibly touch it, feel it, and all that. My theme for this show was a gentle infusion of color. A huge part of my philosophy when it comes to design is colors and patterns and that’s something I focus on a lot in my pieces. The whole idea was to introduce a spectrum of colors going from dark to light and then see what patterns I can implement with that. Before, we used to only make pants, shorts and dungarees when we first started, but then obviously in the winter, you cannot really have shorts and stuff. We thought it would be cool to introduce more pieces that can do well in the winter weather so we put in stuff like jackets, thicker pants, and thicker shirts. Most of what I design is also unisex. For now, I just want to start with the basics, just to kind of get the “Lewini look.” Cos for me, I wanna see something from afar and, kinda guess, “ok, this is something from Lewini,” and then later on we could move on to some more niche stuff.
Cavan: How big was the team you had to work with?
David: Yanny (Budiaki) and I make up the core team. He’s helping me as an intern, cos he’s doing the start-up track for Lewini. Then to direct the runway we had Tara Turkki and Daniella Tsayem. For the media team, we reached out to people like Otmane Sabir, Sophia Hannig and Sandesh Dawadi. They also helped me with setting up the cameras and lights. I mean, before we had an event management team but we had to let them go. And also IT because-
Cavan: Oh, the first people to go...
David: Hahaha. Cos initially we were gonna live stream it but it just became so difficult to figure out all the logistics. The university was very supportive in providing all the equipment we needed but the thing with live-streaming is, say for example, the internet connection is gonna be eduroam, which everyone else is using and say for example there were delays and stuff like that. It’s a bad experience for the guys at home watching online.
Cavan: So it was a pretty strategic move as well to pre-record it and release it in video form..
David: Haha yeah. As opposed to having a bad experience live-streaming or using instagram live, where you’d only see one angle, I’d rather delay the content and release something good. You would just get bad feedback from the consumers otherwise. It was a pretty strategic move and thankfully it worked. It made it a lot more feasible as well because I thought it would be nice to try and not overwhelm the team with too much work.
Cavan: So how did the pandemic affect or change the arrangements of organizing the show?
David: Interestingly, we were kinda scared that campus was gonna cancel it. We only got permission a week before. If you remember, they changed the restrictions around the 12 October and our models were panicking, thinking that we were gonna cancel the whole show. But because this was more of an academic event, being part of my start-up track, the university saw the seriousness to it because we needed it for a business model so it had to happen one way or another. But they said that we couldn’t have external guests.
Cavan: But that change came halfway, right? How did you manage to respond on time?
David: Yeah, it all changed midway through but because of the whole technicality of it, we were actually thinking to not have guests in the beginning anyways. After the university said that we couldn’t have guests, so the decision was made easier for us. We were already prepared for this possibility. It got tricky though with the models because I remember at some point there couldn't be more than five people in a space… and we had thirty models, so we were thinking about how we were gonna do it, are we gonna give everyone like five minute slots to space it out in between. But thankfully we were able to get permission to have forty people in the foyer, so that was really good. The last hurdle though was the face masks because at first they wanted everyone to wear masks and yeah I mean I thought it would look weird on the runway with everyone wearing one. People understood because of the pandemic but that’s not what we had had in mind initially but we worked our way around it. In the video you’ll notice for the final walk, everyone had to wear masks because they were standing closer together, but when it was only one person walking, they could go on without one. So yeah, campus was pretty flexible and very supportive so they helped us out with that.
Cavan: Could you tell us about how your experience, being here at Jacobs, has facilitated this startup as a passion of yours, and how this may have been different if you weren’t at Jacobs.
David: It’s something my family & I talk about a lot when I have calls with them. They can see how much fun I’m having here and how much Lewini is growing as well. I think for me the first thing I really want to point out is the flexibility I enjoy here. So for example, my major is GEM and my minor is IBA, so you can imagine, it's a rigorous curriculum but at the same time there’s a lot of space to apply what you’re learning into something you want to do. So if I weren’t doing Lewini I would probably be working for someone else at a company or something, so the good thing for me was because I had this passion project, I could just swap it and take the opportunity I saw for myself. Recently I quit my job because it was taking up too much of my time.
Another reason why I'm thankful for the startup-track is simply because it wasn’t that difficult for me to register the business here in Germany because the economy here supports students in that way. For example the fact that we can work - I know my mates in the US can’t work outside their university- so i know if i were somewhere else, the legal system might’ve made me struggle even more. All the different pieces just fitted in nicely to give me a chance in making this a reality and I think the startup track is the ultimate culprit because when I tell my friends that I’m taking a semester to work on my passion project they’re like “What’s that?” hahaha. And I’m like “yeah I have no classes. I just have the whole semester to focus on this,” y’know, and that’s really huge for me. Even if I were busy studying, I'd still use my personal time for this. Ultimately, every extra hour I get from the system means a lot because that takes away from the personal time I need to spend instead. Therefore, sincerely, I think if I were anywhere else Lewini may not have grown this much.
Cavan: What advice would you give to anyone currently doing or planning on doing startup track?
David: If I were to give anyone any advice, I would say don't put too much pressure on yourself, in the sense that the idea doesn’t have to kick-off, but really enjoy the process and just make sure you carry things onto the next stage. Try to build on the idea because some ideas take longer than others to realize, so don’t think that by the end of your experience here you have to have an idea that works. Just keep going because you learn a lot of things as well. Personally, even though it’s my own business idea, I’ll update my CV and cover letter sometimes because these skills I’ve learnt can be applied to a job in the future, so it's a win-win.
You can catch the fashion show here.
Follow David on his entrepreneurial journey on instagram!
BY LARISSA MASSAMBY (MOZAMBIQUE) | CLASS OF 2021 AND CAVAN YONG (MALAYSIA) | CLASS OF 2021
