Mimi Yina popularly known as Medlin Boss is the brain behind the brand Medlin Couture. She is a fashion consultant, fashion label owner and brand influencer.
Medlin Boss who has successfully styled top Nollywood actors, music stars, famous reality TV personalities and dignitaries at large in a recent interview shared how her journey started.
“My journey into the fashion world started as passion; a fervent and certain passion. I have always loved fashion; back in the University of Port Harcourt.
As an undergraduate of sociology, I would travel abroad on holidays and come back with a lot of designer clothes for my personal use and people would be like ‘next time you travel please shop for us too’.
So, I realized it would make a lot of sense if I could monetize my passion, so I began to bring clothes to sell whenever I travelled.
I started with one suitcase and everything I brought was bought, so I begun to increase my suitcases, from one to two, then three.And that’s how business started for me. Next came my first shop,” she said.
The Sociology graduate of University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT) also recalled how she lost over N60 million worth of goods.
Medlin Boss said this while recalling the initial challenge faced in building her business brand.
She said, “There were a lot of challenges. I have thought of quitting so many times, but I kept pushing.
I know businesses come with a lot of challenges, but there’s one particular incident that made me want to consider quitting.
We usually receive goods from all over the world. We receive goods from Paris, London, New York, Istanbul… all over the world and I do luxury personal shopping all over the world too. So, at some point we had a lot of deliveries that had just come from everywhere.
A big friend of mine, the commissioner for Tourism In Rivers State, was going to celebrate her birthday and she wanted me to style her.
So I asked a member of my staff to arrange how the goods will get to Port Harcourt using a logistics company. So he wanted to cut corners and he went to use an unreliable logistic company and unfortunately the goods didn’t arrive.
I lost a lot. Goods over 60 million naira. It was so bad that I had to start paying people their money back.The guy really messed up my business.
For me it felt like after all my years of hard work, someone had just taken me back to square one. So many luxury items, from Gucci to Prada to LV. It was a sad moment for me.
Everything came to a halt for me, I just shutdown, I was always in my bed crying everyday, I didn’t even know where to start. I just said to myself that I had to move on.”
Speaking on what she does to ensure she satisfies her celebrity and high society clients, Medlin Boss said, “We pay attention to details.
We don’t leave any stone unturned in ensuring we give them the best and by God’s grace, we have governors’ wives, senators wives, top DGs of banks as clients.
We have loads of top society people in the US. Most of our clients don’t want us to put their names out there. People only get to know about the celebrities we style.”
She also bragged of some of the celebrities on her client list over the years and how some them become her client.
Medlin Boss said: “Funke Akindele, Yemi Alade, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde,Ini Edo, Nancy Isime, Kate Henshaw, Ayo Making (AY), the list goes on.
Funke Akindele was one of the first celebrities that reached out to me, even before I became a full blown stylist.
She sent a DM acknowledging her love for my fashion sense and looks, asked if I sell clothes and she’d like to shop from me.
Long ago (over a decade ago), I’d drive from PH to Enugu with a suitcase full of clothes to her set where I would not only sell but combine her looks and outfit for her; the same thing goes for Ini Edo.”
