A ready made suit can be picked off the rack in minutes, in a standard size, at a price that local workshops struggle to match. Yet a growing number of Kenyan tailors are betting that buyers will pay more for what imports cannot offer: a garment cut to their own measurements, in a fabric and design of their choosing.
Two Nairobi businesses, SAO Sartorial and Logical City, show what that wager looks like in practice. Their owners say the competition is not only about price, and that some customers will pay more for a suit made to their specifications.
At SAO Sartorial, creative director Sydney Owino has watched the cost of making a suit climb since he started.
‘The first suit I did was costing Sh5,500. But right now we’re at a level where the cheapest suit we’re doing on made-to-measure is Sh58,500, and on bespoke, it is $1,850 (about Sh239,000),’ Mr Owino says.
The business began with about Sh100,000, which paid the initial rent and bought a cutting table and a sewing machine. In 2015, it operated from a stall in Nairobi’s central business district, with Mr Owino and one tailor. It now employs 14 people, with separate roles for cutting, trousers and jacket production, administration, logistics, accounting and social media.
‘You can never have all these things at once. It takes time to understand that you can’t do it all by yourself,’ he says.
That growth followed several difficult years. Before SAO became what it is today, Mr Owino tried three brands: a jeans business, a suit business and a ready-to-wear line. The last nearly undermined his custom-tailoring work. Running it pushed his rent to about 10 times what he had been paying.
When he approached a bank for financing, he found he was listed with the Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) over an unpaid Higher Education Loans Board loan from his university days, which had grown substantially. He settled the debt, returned to SAO and rebuilt by contacting clients directly.
‘That is how we got out of the mud,’ he says.
The episode taught him that an entrepreneur’s personal financial obligations can decide whether the enterprise survives. It also exposed gaps in his business knowledge.
‘I had not learned accounting. I had not learned marketing. I had not learned simple things like production management,’ he says.
Turning profitable
He introduced a detailed costing system. Instead of guessing what a garment should cost, he began accounting for every expense.
‘I found an accountant who created a document for me. It listed my shop’s rent, fabric prices, tailor’s labour, electricity, airtime, transportation, consumables, everything that I did not have a view of,’ he says.
The exercise showed him how sales volume affects pricing.
‘If you’re selling 20 suits in a month, you must sell them at this price. If you want to sell 50 suits, then you can reduce this price,’ he says.
He multiplies production cost by 2.25 to reach a selling price meant to cover expenses, make a profit and pay him, though he stresses this is his own method and not an industry standard.
The business turned profitable after about a year, and he has recovered his initial investment. ‘I’ve been able to pay back the money and save,’ he says.
SAO specialises in made-to-measure and bespoke garments, producing about two suits and two shirts a day. Made-to-measure adapts a garment to a customer’s measurements, while bespoke typically involves a more individually developed pattern and greater customisation.
Mr Owino later studied anthropometry, the study of human body measurements, which helped him see why standard sizing can fail some African customers.
‘Many of us are a little short and stout, with thicker thighs, and standard sizing doesn’t account for our stature,’ he says.
Rather than having one tailor handle every stage, SAO uses specialists for components such as trousers and jackets. It does not hire tailors with fewer than six years of experience, and newcomers can spend a year or more in training. The emphasis on experience has a cost, since developing and retaining such a team takes time.
‘I have been in this industry for about 17 years, and it has not been a straight line,’ Mr Owino says.
Some days he wonders whether the business might fail. ‘I sit in my shop and wonder, what if it all fails? Then I pick myself up and remember I have 14 families to feed. Giving up is not an option,’ he says.
Quality control reaches small details. Everyone in the atelier, from Mr Owino to an intern still learning the trade, uses the same brand and type of tape measure. ‘I like to say: measure twice, cut once,’ he says.
He also meets each client before the team begins work, using that first conversation to understand their preferences.
From Gikomba to UK, Canada, US
For Onyango Nelson Mandela, founder of Logical City, the journey began with Sh500 and a series of small ventures, including selling shoes sourced from Gikomba. He recals buying one pair for Sh250 and selling it for Sh4,500. The proceeds helped him buy his first sewing machine.
He became a sole proprietor in 2018, starting from a small store in Nairobi CBD with two sewing machines and two tailors. Logical City now has 13 tailors and four support staff, with a private office and a production line.
At one point, the business closed its physical locations for about one and a half years. Mr Mandela sees that period as a pause rather than an end.
‘It is all about closing the physical locations but not closing the purpose, the vision and the dream,’ he says.
Logical City suits range from about $200 (Sh25,900) to $1,500 (Sh194,250), depending on fabric, accessories, design, colour, construction method, turnaround time and order volume.
Mr Mandela says that a customer once expected a pair of trousers to cost about Sh7,000, but the design requested came to roughly Sh13,500, even with entry-level fabric.
The business positions itself around consultation. Mr Mandela says his team seeks to understand a customer’s profession, the people they deal with and the image they want to project before advising on the garment. Persuading more consumers to pay for local tailoring remains difficult, particularly when they compare prices with cheaper imports.
‘Bit by bit, with patience, with consistency, you get to have people who get to start appreciating, get to start understanding,’ he says.
Although the garments are made locally, Logical City relies heavily on imported fabric. Its suppliers are in South Africa, Italy and India: Indian cottons and linens for shirts, Italian, British and American cloth for suiting, and linen from Turkey and the Netherlands.
Kenya’s limited textile-manufacturing base makes it hard to source materials locally, and importing adds to costs.
Mr Mandela also cites difficulty accessing quality fabric, dealing with workers he considers unethical, and customers who do not always understand why a locally tailored garment costs what it does.
His advice to entrepreneurs is to reinvest in their people, stay disciplined and build a customer base through referrals and repeat business.
‘Ensuring that your market base largely comes from referrals and return clients works better for his business than relying on social media advertising and influencers,’ he says.
Mr Mandela does not disclose revenue, margins or total investment, saying profitability varies, but notes that the business continues to meet its bills and improve its quality. He believes the market for local tailoring is growing, though it needs stronger domestic textile production and more support from policymakers and consumers.
‘We need to shun this mentality of foreign is quality,’ he says.
Logical City already serves clients in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, and hopes to expand across Africa and eventually onto recognised international fashion platforms.