It starts with
Segun Agbaje, CEO, Guaranty Trust Bank plc
a vision
Away from the main stage of the
biggest fashion event in Africa, and
long before the first set of more than
100,000 people arrived for a fashion
experience of their lifetime, we were
faced with an existential challenge: how
do we do more to enrich the lives of our
customers?
We considered this question an
existential challenge because we believed
that today, for organizations to remain
relevant, they must constantly pursue
innovative ideas that offer more value
to customers. For us, there could be no
greater value than empowering small
businesses and providing exciting lifestyle
experiences for our customers.
That is why over the last decade we have
sponsored a wide range of consumer-
focused events, and in the last three
years, created Free Business Platforms
such as the GTBank Food and Drink Fair
and the GTBank Fashion Weekend. We
believe that with people’s spending often
limited to taking care of basic needs—
what to eat and what to wear;—if we
focused on promoting enterprise in food
and fashion, we would be propelling local
entrepreneurs to dominate two critical
sectors of our economy. We amplified this
with Fashion Industry Credit - a 9.00%p.a
single digit interest rate loan for small
businesses in fashion.
Growth is what we work towards with
the GTBank Fashion Weekend—for
indigenous fashion businesses in
particular, and for the local fashion
industry as a whole. But this growth does
not come any easier than the struts of
Africa’s finest models on the runway of
Africa’s biggest event. Though packaged
into a 2-day event, it takes us a whole year
of non-stop hard-work, no-minute spared
in commitment, and working with people
in every continent to pull this off.
Pull this off we will, come 10th and 11th of
November 2018. The main stage of the
biggest fashion event in Africa is now set,
and we can’t wait to open the gates to
tens of thousands of fashion lovers from
across the continent and beyond.
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