On her social media platforms, she is Cris Njoki, a millennial coach, gracing the content creation platforms with her glamorous posts.
On the entrepreneurial side, Cris is more than just a content creator, but the founder and CEO of Ikojn.
Ikojn, a made-in-Kenya women’s fashion brand, is gracing our streets with quality women’s pieces with beautiful patterns.
Through her clothing line, she has been able to establish a name in the Kenyan market with her unique sense of fashion designs.
Here is the journey of the 37-year-old entrepreneur, from losing millions and still picking up to create her brand.
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The Love for Fashion
At only 13 years old, she found her love for fashion after discovering her mother’s old pieces.
She would re-design and alter them to her size and would wear them to church. Despite her early interest in fashion, she didn’t think it would be a career path until his father suggested she should pursue fashion as a career.
Raised in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Cris Njoki attended the Mcensal School of Fashion immediately after high school.
While in fashion school, she developed a love for thrift shopping, with one of her favorite markets being Gikomba, a huge Kenyan market that sells second-hand clothes.
At Gikomba, she would buy clothes from as low as Kshs. 10 ($ 0.076). Often finding great pieces that were not her size birthed the idea of buying to sell to friends and fellow students.
Cris Njoki’s Business Journey
At 22 years old, she would buy dresses from the Gikomba market, clean them up, take pictures, and present them on her Facebook page.
For a year, she would post and sell clothing pieces on her Facebook page. The she discovered car boot sales – a sales program that happened almost every weekend in Nairobi.
She ventured into car boot sales and would make around Kshs. 300,000 – 400,000 ($2600)over the weekend.
Success in the car boot sales business inspired her to start a fashion brand.
The Birth of Ikojn
With savings of about Kes 2 million, she traveled to China and contracted a manufacturer for fashion pieces worth Kes 1.5M ($11,400).
Months later when the shipment arrived, she realized that the Chinese manufacturer had used a different fabric than agreed upon. The clothes were of low quantity and not ideal to be sold under the name of a new brand.
Suffering through the loss of over a million Kenyan shillings did not stop the young entrepreneur.
She therefore moved production to Kenya and with a sewing machine; designed several pieces and created her initial portfolio. She would then send her portfolios to other designers to pitch her ideas and probably get an opportunity.
After several pieces, she got a reply from one designer who liked her piece and offered to advertise it on her page.
That was when people started ordering from her and within a short period, she was making several pieces for sale.
That was in 2015, the beginning of Ikojn. Ikojn is from her name Njoki, spelled backwards.
The Growth and Expansion of Ikojn
At first, the business was not making enough profits. For almost four years, she was only making enough money to keep the business running.
However, persistent in posting on social media platforms saw the business gain a large audience in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
End of 2020, she opened her first store at the Westgate Mall and has been able to open other stores over the years at Greenhouse Mall, Imaara Mall, and Yaya Center, all in Nairobi.
She admits that she had to have her employees working during the pandemic to meet the increasing demand.
Cris Njoki owes her brand, Ikojn’s growth to aggressive social media marketing and is looking to expand the brand outside Kenya and probably outside Africa.
