Creating yoga accessories from East African kanga fabric - Freya Samuel (BA Modern Languages)

It’s been an exciting few weeks since securing the B-Enterprising Ideas Fund investment for my business Kanga Yoga.

It has been a very quick process from coming up with the idea, to securing the funding, to launching the website and going live.

Kanga Yoga is an eCommerce website selling yoga accessories, including yoga mat bags and yoga mat straps, which I make by hand in the UK from beautiful East African kanga fabric. The business also donates 10% of all sales to a charity based in Nairobi, Kenya, which empowers women through employment - it has been a real pleasure working with them so far. 

The funding has been invaluable in making my business idea a reality, and I have been able to overcome a big milestone that would have been very difficult without the investment: the website! I worked with a really skilled web designer to come up with a brand identity that is cohesive across the website. We also had to design all the individual pages, and decide how to lay out the online shop - this last part was difficult, as every item is unique and has to be updated frequently. However, after lots of hard work we came up with a design that works seamlessly, and a website that I am really proud of. There are a lot of costs involved with setting up a high-quality website, and for an eCommerce business this is especially important - this crucial stage of starting up my business would not have been possible without the investment from B-Enterprising. 

I am now in the stages of setting up Google Ads and Google Shopping to advertise my business to a tailored online audience. Again, this can be a costly process and I am very grateful that the funding will allow me not only to start up my business, but to grow it. I am also currently working on building up a social media following for the brand. My initial marketing strategy has involved advertising through yoga influencers on Instagram. It is difficult to track the conversions through this means of advertising, but it is helping me to build up a social media following which will also create my audience for Instagram Ads later down the line. 

I have learnt a lot about setting up an eCommerce business in my first few weeks: from producing a high-quality website, to organising branding, packaging, and delivery, to navigating the maze of online marketing, I still have so much to learn and lots of new avenues to explore. I am really excited to see what the future holds for Kanga Yoga, and I am very grateful to the University of Birmingham’s Ideas Fund for this opportunity. 

Find out more by visiting the Kanga Yoga website


Blog post by Freya Samuel (BA Modern Languages, University of Birmingham)
Published by Bob Lee, B-Enterprising Team