We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hendrika Masire. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hendrika below.
Hi Hendrika, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I always say I am strong because that was my only option. As an immigrant living in a foreign country with no family, I never really had anything or anyone to fall back on. So every time I get knocked down, I knew it was up to me to get back up and keep going. No one but me can do it. That fact both scared and empowered me. I have taught myself to find beauty in the pain of success. Because one thing I have learned is that achieving a significant amount of success involves pain. It’s resilience and purpose that gets me through that pain.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a self taught seamstress and designer. One thing that I find really unique about my art is I personally sew every single thing I design from scratch.
Whenever I’m creating a new piece, I only have my sketchbook, a piece of fabric and my sewing machine to begin with. Then I figure out how to turn those into beautiful dress or top or bikini. I think that’s rare. Many designers aren’t taking the time to learn the art of creating clothes, they outsource clothes and customize them to their brand. And I’m not knocking designers that can’t sew. Everyone interprets their art differently. I don’t think me being able to sew my clothes makes me any better than other designer.
However, sewing clothes is hard. It’s time consuming, it’s unpredictable and it’s very challenging at times. But I am not just a designer, I am a seamstress. I pride myself in my ability to create clothes. Sewing has also allowed me to learn and appreciate how different fabrics work and feel. I develop strong connections to my fabrics when I’m sewing them.
I know I will get to a point in my growth that I won’t be able to sew every single thing I sell. But for now I’m happy to learn and keep building up my craft.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say sewing, marketing and consistency/discipline have been the most important for me to learn and master in my business journey.
Sewing everything myself is my way of making sure my art cannot be duplicated. A lot of my designs are really intricate so they can be copied but they cannot be duplicated. Mastering the art of sewing allows me to really play with my imagination.
Second, Marketing was a huge challenge for me. My advise to any creative wanting to monetize their passion is to learn and master the art of marketing. Just being talented is not enough. Not even close. There are so many broke talented people. I had to transition from just being a dope designer to being a dope business woman that designs clothes. I even paid for online courses and followed other successful business women so that I could learn how to be good at business and at marketing. My advice for upcoming business owners is to have an unquenchable thirst for business knowledge. Seek out information that will improve your business. You can never learn too much.
Lastly, I believe lack of consistency is one the biggest silent business killers. So many times I would get discouraged and stop posting. But after forcing myself to be consistent and disciplined whether I felt like it or not, I discovered that consistency was my missing key. Think of it like this, if you have a soccer ball and just keep kicking it in the direction of the goal post, eventually you will inevitably score. Regardless of how bad or good your soccer skills are. Even if you miss 100 times, you will manage to get into the goal post at least once. Sometimes that one score out of 100 misses is all it takes to make your dreams come true. It took me a while but I finally learned that discipline is a verb and not an adjective.
How would you describe your ideal client?
My ideal client is the woman who’s not afraid to stand out. A woman that likes to have a style that is her own and nobody else’s. A woman that is unapologetic about who she is. A lot of my designs are custom made 1 of 1s for this reason. I want people to feel unique and special. I purposefully design clothes that are different from what everyone else is doing. If the current trend is denim, that I wanna do leather. If everyone is designing pink then I design blue.
My whole life, I’ve always been the odd one out. The one that doesn’t fit in even if I tried. I used to hate this when I was younger and I wanted to be liked and accepted but now I embrace it. I find strength and power in it.My designs are physical translation of this. I design clothes that do not fit in.
My ideal clients prides herself in looking notably different from everyone else. They are edgy and bold. They are bossy and confident in their skin.
God willing I can grow into designing men’s clothes as well so they can feel unique and special too.
Contact Info:
- Website: hennylaika.com
- Instagram: @hennylaika
- Facebook: Henny Laika
- Twitter: @hennylaika
- Tik tok: @hennylaika
