Juliet Namujju is the founder and CEO of Kimuli Fashionability, a sustainable fashion label transforming the waste crisis in Africa into employment opportunities for disabled tailors by imparting creative skills training and ‘up-cycles’ waste materials, and blending them with African fabrics.
Juliet has been able to present her upcycled fashion at the Germany Bildkorrekturren Fair Fashion Conference 2017, won the Ugandan Ye-Community Award 2018, was a Tony Emelu Foundation Fellow for producing eco-friendly facemasks for the disabled, and was awarded winner of the ‘Global Greenpreneur Award 2019 by Ban-Ki-Moon.
Juliet grew up in poverty as an orphan with a single grandmother in a remote village in Uganda due to the victimisation of disability. Her grandmother was a tailor and inspired her as a child to use cut-offs and plastic waste to produce her own dolls because she could not afford buying her toys. What others threw away, Juliet saw as a resource. After attaining a certificate in fashion and design at the age of 20, Juliet founded Kimuli Fashionability.
Q&A
What are your plans or what do you hope to achieve with your innovation in the next few years?
“I hope to develop and execute sales and marketing plans, accommodate 10-30 persons with disabilities at a time to boost our production capacity, implement quality plans and train tailors for continuous quality improvement. I also plan to create a fashionability teaching program for revenue, increase sales partners through ecommerce platforms, ebranding the label from the logo to cotton product brand-tags which are customised and needed in bulk.”
What kind of support would you like to grow your innovation from other stakeholders such government, international organizations and the business community?
“I would like to join strong networks for support, get funding from investors and donors to grow my brand. I hope to change people’s mindsets and make up-cycled fashion in Africa a household item. I wish to learn and share with other stakeholders, mentors, fellows, change makers, entrepreneurs, innovators and commonwealth experts. I wish to enhance my entrepreneurial skills and gain knowledge on how to build strong business management systems and scaling up.”