Nigeria’s leading sports kit company, AFA Sports has added perfume to its line of products.
Now, there is AFA perfume and the variety of products will be hitting the market worldwide with the big launch set for Paris by the first quarter of 2022, after a pre-launch event was held in Lagos this month.
The Chief Executive Officer of AFA Sports, Ugo Udezue, said that adding fragrance to their lineup was just one of the many ways of fulfilling every aspects of the schedule they have marked out as a sporting brand.
“Our brand is about lifestyles and sports. We will cover all aspects,” Udezue explained.
AFA clothing hit the market in 2017 and has catered for different classes of people in the society. Their unique designs with touches of Nigerian and African fabrics has made strong marks in the market and Udezue, a former power forward with the Nigerian men’s basketball team D’Tigers explained that the plan was not different this time.
As a brand, AFA has been conscientious to the needs of African athletes, just as when it developed the humid-resist-fabric to keep the body cool in Africa’s extreme humidity. When the firm was named the official apparel partner to Team Nigeria for the Tokyo Olympics, AFA Sports conducted an extensive research on the Japanese climate in order to curate the best performance fabrics for the Olympics team where the margins of success can come down to the athletics products.
It is similar story for the fragrance line.
“We are passionate about changing the narrative of the African story through a positive mindset while working diligently to create products that deliver in all facets at the international level.
“Our fragrance will cater to our environment and essence of Africa. We have beautiful and organic essential plants that will convey the beautiful scents of Africa.”
The chief operating officer for the AFA Fragrance, Adem Jelane, delved into perfume by passion and the determination to create things very unique in the industry. He had never met the AFA team and had actually been doing a lot of research that could serve such huge brands as Adidas or Nike until he met Udezue on a cold night in Europe.
“I had never met Ugo in any way and you know that the AFA brand is new in the industry and so I knew little or nothing about them until early this year when the Nigerian women basketball team were in Serbia. Ugo and I stayed in the same hotel and I was fascinated by the lovely designs of the AFA brand. So, I asked questions and that was how we got talking. You know that AFA has quite a lovely birth story and the philosophy to do something special about Africa and with Africans swept me off my feet.
“Some of things we are using to achieve the AFA fragrance goals are things I had done way back in 2018 in Beijing and considering which firm can best handle. I’m blessed to have ran into AFA because they have a good story that marches my thoughts,” Jelane explained.
Jelane believes the AFA story will help sell their perfumes in a market where a lot of super brands are competing already.
“The concept is what is going to work. Products with powerful unique stories sell. AFA fragrance is going to be a big hit especially in the USA. We have a sellable story. The fragrance is coming from a mix of coffee and mint from Ethiopia and chocolate from Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria and a few materials from other African countries. We are developing from within Africa – ideas, designs and raw materials. The other established names source materials largely from Asia and Africa but in this case AFA is coming in as a home grown brand.”
Some of AFA bottles have been designed like their best selling AFA sneakers. It would be launched with eight different fragrances – five dedicated to men and three to the ladies. AFA will be working with about 120 distributors across 85 countries as they strive to get into every home and every market indeed despite existing stiff competition.
“We are not worried about any other brand. Our objectives and proposition are entirely unique,” Udezue sums up.
