Nelly Wandji: Building A Business To Develop And Promote African Creativity Pt.1
The Beginnings And Many Iterations of The Consulting Firm MoonLook Africa
This conversation is part of the series The Underrated Fashion Professionals Talks, in which I interview fashion professionals from all over the world about different aspects of the industry.
Nelly Wandji is a force to be reckoned with. She has been working tirelessly for more than a decade now to highlight and help develop African creativity through MoonLook Africa, her consulting firm “for the prosperity of cultural & creative industries: elevating heritage, structuring entrepreneurship, fostering creativity & innovation.”
After observing her evolve MoonLook Africa over the years, I am now proud to be part of her team as editorial coordinator. Nelly is a fascinating figure in the business of African creativity because she is a francophone Cameroonian (Cameroon is also an English-speaking country), who also speaks English, which gives her a unique perspective.
While MoonLook Africa isn’t a media company, it also has an editorial pillar called Chronicles aimed at providing practical business advice to creative entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises in Africa and the African diaspora. It is also an entry point to the Academy, another pillar through which the agency gives them the tools to “[bridge] the gap between artistic vision and commercial success in the global market.”
Rightly because MoonLook Africa has a 360 approach; the vision is one-of-a-kind in the African creative landscape.
I want to bring you behind the scenes of that unique approach, hence why the format of this Underrated Fashion Professionals Talks is a little bit different: you will receive three free letters, one today, one on Friday, and one next week. The first half of the letter will be an interview, and the second half will focus on one or many aspects of Nelly’s work.
Can you introduce yourself, please?
I am Nelly.
I'm passionate about creation, which I discovered about twenty years ago, when I arrived in France. I was born and raised in Cameroon in a rather modest but large family: I am the ninth child in a family of eleven.
With the support of my siblings, I had the opportunity to pursue higher education and join a business school when I arrived in France and study international trade. It's a bit cliché, I know.
After studying international trade, I chose a major that would help me better understand the world of century-old brands. That's how I fell into the luxury world and started discovering the great maisons, their history, and how they became iconic. That interested me a lot. That's how, little by little, I started going to exhibitions, galleries, visiting and found myself in this world of creativity that I strongly desired to tell about through an African lens. I don't know if that says who I am, but I think it describes how I got where I am today.
That's super interesting. I appreciate that you were born and raised in Cameroon like me, although we have different trajectories. Unlike you, I left very early, but then I came back. So, I have a connection with it, but maybe not as deep as yours. Let's say it's not linear.
I understand. Your connection is perhaps not as rooted as mine.
I was already my own person before I arrived in France. Many things had already been embedded within me, including values and personality. I had my adolescence in Cameroon. So, I think yes, it can be different for someone who grew up and became a teenager or started understanding the world on the other side of the Mediterranean than someone who started understanding the world on the continent.
I have a different path. I left when I was three years old, so I had few memories.
Oh yeah? That means your memories are very fleeting.
That's it. And then I came back when I was eight. We stayed until I was twelve. So, yes, I have more memories, but regarding my identity as a Cameroonian and as a Douala and an Ewodi person [editor’s note: the two ethnic groups my family belongs to], these are things I learned along the way. So, my approach from a professional and personal point of view is different compared to yours, because you already knew where you came from. There are things you didn’t need to research.
Yes, that's true. It's so insidious and rooted that we don't even necessarily realise it.
But I felt this desire for reconnection, because I had the feeling that I had lost it.
Once in France, I studied for almost six years. After my fourth year, I did a year in work-study, and I didn't like it too much. Then I wanted my last year to be more specialised, and this gave me the opportunity to enter the luxury world.
At the end of my studies, I worked for a luxury group for almost five years.
After almost ten years in France, I felt like a big void, the absence of something and a form of disconnection from reality.
I don't know if it was maybe a disconnection from my own reality. Because then, I was working for a large group, and my role was to support the development of boutiques in several European countries.
I had a very hectic and exciting life as a dynamic young executive. A very fulfilling Parisian life, too. But at the same time, I found that something was missing.
So, it's that ‘something’ that I went to look for in Africa. Because even if I often returned to the continent, I returned in vacation mode. I didn't return in discovery mode, though I'm curious by nature.
From the moment I put myself in discovery mode, all my curiosity for what I didn't know about the continent awakened.
Even if you're born and raised in Cameroon, that doesn't mean you know Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria or Senegal.
So, I thought, "Here, I did my studies, my parents are happy, I have a job, I earn good money, ultimately, I should be happy and that's it, life is good." Well, no.
At that particular moment, I saw that something was missing. And that's what attracted me to what I do today. This curiosity about things you don't know, and maybe a path that isn't mapped out.
I think sometimes, when you have the comfort of a job in a big company, you say to yourself, "That's it, I can be career-driven, that's it, my path is mapped out". And I didn’t want that.
When I entered the big company in question, I was promoted quickly. I started as an intern, and at the end of my internship, I was recruited. After a year and a half, I was promoted. After two years, I was promoted again. And the next step was to replace my superior.
I had been working for this company for five years, and I could see my path if I stayed there, and I didn't like it.
I think what you say is very telling, because it's the path that many French people who do business studies have. When you look at the path of French executives in these big groups like LVMH and Kering, it's always the same: they were interns, then they were promoted. Everything is very linear. I'm not saying they are incompetent, but it creates a system where you're in a comfort zone, in my opinion.
Exactly. It scared me rather instead of reassuring me. I thought: if that's life and there's nothing else, then it’s too banal, it’s too boring.
I was in a group that owned a lot of brands. One of the oldest was a very beautiful Swiss watch brand that was 225 years old, and I thought the guy who created this brand 225 years ago didn't want security in his life. He just wanted to test something, and he transmitted it. I thought it was much more exciting to do that than to be the one who's going to be at the end of the chain, saying, "Come on, we're going to put this in the boutique like this, we're going to launch the next campaign."
It doesn't leave much room for innovation, for creativity, even if they'll tell you that big groups innovate. But I find that it confines you. Of course, it depends on people's personalities, but it limits you to a path that is marked out.
Yes, I see what you mean. There's already a story that's been written, and you're just there to...
You are the accessory, you know [laughs].
I also find it interesting that you said that, even if you're Cameroonian, you don't know the other African countries. And often, I think it's not something that people in the West think, because they see Africa as a mass. I found your point pertinent because even in Cameroon, we have great cultural diversity among us. As I was telling you, although I'm Douala and Ewodi, there are plenty of other ethnic groups in Cameroon that I don't necessarily know.
Same for me. I grew up in Douala, but I don't know Yaoundé [editor’s note: Cameroon’s capital] like I know Douala and the West of Cameroon, because I come from the West, so with my family, we go there often.
So, I have a relationship with the West of Cameroon that's different from the relationship I'm going to have with the East or the North, which I don't know. Discovering other places in the country isn't something we're taught.
You see, when you're in France, for example, if you live in Paris, you're naturally going to say, “I'm going on vacation to Marseille with friends”. We're going to take the car, do a road trip. In Cameroon, if you're in Douala, you say, "ah, we're going to go North for tourism," your parents are going to tell you, “But who do you know there? What are you going to do there?" So, this relationship to what lies beyond we don't cultivate it. I find that in the West it is. You see, at 18, you have the right to take your backpack, take the train and leave. Your parents aren't going to hold you back.
That was my experience. At 18, I made my first trip to Italy. I left all alone. I also travelled a lot in Cameroon with my family. We went to the north and the west. So, that allowed me to see a bit of Cameroon, even as a child. That's how you realise that people don't have the same mentality. We don't talk about it enough: the fact that even if we're one country, we don't speak the same language.
Languages change the way of thinking. Okay, French is the lingua franca, but when you speak another language, it means you also have a different mentality. Some customs are completely different. What you eat is also different. And we forget it. So, when you visit neighbouring countries, the abyss is even deeper. It's super interesting that this is what nourished you to create MoonLook.
To unlock the potential of Africa’s creative industries, we are running a survey to better understand consumer needs and supporting creative entrepreneurs to succeed both on the continent and internationally.
The survey is open to creators, institutions, investors, policy makers, and industry professionals of the African creative ecosystem.
MOONLOOK’S BEGINNINGS AND THE BUSINESS REALITY CHECK
My goal wasn't to show things that looked like Africa, but things made in Africa, where the anchoring and the team are local.
Everything started in Ghana, where I discovered many creators.
Returning to Paris, I posted everything I discovered in Ghana on Facebook and Instagram, and people were enthusiastic. And upon my return, I wondered what I could do to frame this. I don't like doing things halfway; it’s a kind of job conditioning. Since I came from a big luxury group, I had a different perspective.
My goal wasn't to show things that looked like Africa, but things made in Africa, where the anchoring and the team are local.
I was used to campaigns, to printers, to a schedule. So, I structured all that and turned it into MoonLook.
I didn’t necessarily interact directly with the artisans because they don't have a relationship with the brand. In the group I worked with, my daily interlocutors were brand managers. I had this relationship with the designer who was going to work with the artisan to enhance the designer’s work.
Let's say I stopped doing what I did for a big group and started doing it for myself, which meant identifying designers, making their brand known, and selling it.
The framework was different, though, because there were fewer resources.
When you start on your own, you don't have the big communication campaigns, budgets, and teams. In front of you, you have a designer who works with a few artisans and doesn’t have huge resources.
I became a marketing manager, commercial manager, and export manager for these small designers.
MoonLook started like this: I put the brands I discovered in Ghana on a platform, asked a photographer friend to take pretty pictures of the pieces in a very professional way, and then saw how people would react to that.
At the time, the Internet wasn't what it is today. There was a form of reluctance. People didn't buy naturally online from people they didn't know. There was enthusiasm on social networks, but on the Internet, I couldn't convert. So, I did pop-ups.
I did my first one at the end of 2014. It was a meeting between African designers and Parisians. I selected about fifteen designers, rented a space, found furniture, and made an installation to display the products. Even though the budget was not huge, the dynamic logic, logic and structure were the same as when I installed the big boutiques in airports.
When I announced the pop-up, people came organically, because it was on the well-established Boulevard Beaumarchais in Paris. Others discovered the pop-up through Metro, a daily publication.
We did a one-month pop-up, and it was great because all the brands we had brought sold something. We didn't sell everything, but we still made 45,000 euros in turnover. For a one-month pop-up, it was cool if you consider that for a big brand with a storefront, that knows its target, is featured in the press, and has a great communication strategy, they can make 100 00 euros in a month.
The turnover boosted me and all 15 brands sold.
Of course, I made mistakes, as does every entrepreneur. Unlike the company I worked for, I did everything alone, which meant that I didn’t have the same level of expertise on everything. So even if we made 45,000 euros in turnover, we had to pay the brands almost 60%, because I didn't buy their stock.
I didn't buy their stocks: they entrusted them to me, I sold them, and I reimbursed them. Each brand received 60% of the sales we had made. There was 20% that was already for the State in VAT. And the rest, that's what paid for the local and equipment. Even though I didn’t pay myself because I was left with nothing, I was very enthusiastic. I was more obsessed with the turnover I had made than the fact that I had nothing in my pocket at the end.
At the time, stylist Laetitia Kandolo accompanied us to make a fashion show. After this experience, I told myself I would never do one again in my life because it was too difficult.
We did a small presentation with Laetitia, who helped us select models, do the styling and everything.
Many people helped us, and everyone was enthusiastic about making things happen.
After, we noticed selling online still wasn't working - with me, used to the boutique, and meeting people - in 2015, I did a second summer pop-up.
We did it in the same location because I had kept good relations with the owner. It lasted a month, and this time we made a turnover of around 60,000 euros. We had even more press. It was starting to hit the mark.
But once again, I had poorly negotiated my deal with the brands because it wasn't easy. And I found myself again at the end of the chain with nothing.
And this it, for the first part with my conversation with Nelly.
MoonLook Africa is one-of-a-kind in the creative industry, so spread the word for people to discover Nelly’s work.