The racial tension and health anxiety created by the 2020 George Floyd murder and COVID 19 pandemic all culminated for me to a personal unrest and time management crises. Since 2004, when I started my pharmaceutical career, I’ve had a traveling job that kept me on the road and away from my family 2 to 4 days per week. And then came the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020 and the beginning of the work-from-home era which created a prime opportunity for me to spend quality time with family and be the all-round American Mom I’ve always fantasized about. I picked up baking, expanded my culinary skills, planted a garden, joined mom support groups and started toying around with the idea of rekindling a flamed out passion of mine in kids fashion.
There was something joyous yet so post-traumatic about toying around with the idea hopping back into the kids fashion arena. When I started Shells Belles Kidz in 2015, things flamed up very quickly, we saw quick success and some encouraging signs that we tapped into an important niche market for kids: using African inspired ankara prints on more luxuriant fabrics to tailor apparels for girls. But very quickly, my inexperience in entrepreneurship and inability to balance work life gave room for business frustrations and challenges which led to retiring the business in 2017 to focus the little spare time I had on my then travel job and family.
So in the summer of 2020 and wake of Covid-19 shutdown, while I was still busy redistributing my free time to my new found American Mom life, the killing of George Floyd happened and everything changed for my African American family. My daughters who inspired me back in 2015 to start Shells Belles Kids when they were 7 and 10 years old were now mini adults at 13 and 15 years old and had a lot to feel and express in-terms of strong opinions about how they processed the Floyd incident and their own experiences. Having been raised in the Eastern part of Nigeria, I was taken aback because for the first time in my 20 years since relocating to the United States, I was able to relate and process the racial tension in America in a more visceral way through the lenses of my daughters as African Americans as opposed to an indigenous African woman that I was.
So one hot summer afternoon, the girls asked me to drive them to a Black Lives Matter protest which I was very reluctant to do due to the risk of looting, violence and contracting COVID-19. After much push back, I gave in because of the passion I saw in their eyes, a burning desire to be heard and make a difference. I could relate because I’ve felt that passion once. As I dropped them off, I stayed back in the car to wait and watched them disappear into the crowd with their right fist clinched and thrust up in the air. That image left an indelible mark in my heart and head. I sat in they car and asked myself “Shells how can you make a difference? what can you do to promote diversity and demote the fear of people of color? How can you show your daughters walking in that protest that you stand with them, that their life matters?”
The one and only answer that kept emerging in my thoughts was inclusivity. But it sounded so cliche to me. I thought to myself, Real America is not a corporate lab where old and tired diversity and inclusivity initiatives go to die. Majority of Americans want change, they want fairness, they will choose love over hate, they want inclusivity and they love to experience other cultures. The last point stuck with me “real Americans love to experience other cultures”. It was my light bulb moment. I had plenty time on my hands due to the lockdown and here I am still very passionate about using African and heritage inspired prints to create fashion for kids. I can and should get back into that (again) but now with a repurposed and renewed vision; transforming from the aesthetic vision I previously had with Shells Belles Kids to a new vision with a focus on promoting diversity and inclusivity in kids fashion. It clicked! It was profound and too meaningful, a higher purpose not just for me but also for my daughters and the world around me. As I still sat there in my car waiting for my girls to return from the protest, I shed a tear or two because there and then I knew something new has been birthed- a second chance with a renewed purpose to make a real difference.
With the renewed passion and vision intact, I started experiencing fear attack in the following weeks to come. The fear of failure, post traumatic trigger of past business challenges ranging from inventory management and fulfillment issues to vendor disappointments to production delays and obsessing over balancing business sheets. The attack didn’t stand a chance or take a strong hold because the vision and mission this time was bigger and more meaningful- using my passion for fashion to promote diversity and inclusivity. And I can confidently say that since then, we’ve travelled the long road of learning and unlearning to repurpose our mission, to piece together the PUZZLE of courage and confidence to rebrand Shells Belles Kidz and relaunch Biageli Parade. The name Biageli is culled from my mothers name Obiageli. Our brand draws inspiration from the female ELEPHANT, the leader of a Parade of elephants in the most matriarchal society in the animal kingdom. For us, it represents girl power! girl leadership YET balanced with the soft and nurturing virtues the girl elephant is also known to embody.
Biageli Parade is an ethno-modern global girl brand that has found it’s niche in using Heritage-inspired prints to create bold and beautiful apparels for girls aged 2 to 10 years old. In Biageli Parade, we’ve found our sweet spot and craftsmanship in fusing and balancing the strong vibrant appeal of ethnic prints with the softer, demure and clean appeal of contemporary prints. With each collection, to promote inclusivity and diversity, we tell stories through our heritage inspired prints from Africa and cultures all over the world while drawing style inspiration from what we know girls and moms value.