Uber for tailors”. Fashion Map #Nigeria @fashionmap_app

Rich and poor, everyone has a tailor here,” says Olajire Omikunle, a couturier for Nigeria’s powerful. So great is the appeal of a well-cut outfit in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial centre, that roadside stitchers rove the streets armed with their sewing machines and clicking their large scissors to drum up customers.

David Peterside, a local entrepreneur, hopes to capitalise on this sartorial obsession with a new app that is being dubbed an “Uber for tailors”. Fashion Map allows natty Nigerians to find a suitmaker at the press of a button. It may be a perfect fit for Africa’s most populous country. Nigeria has a fast-growing base of smartphone users and “over 100,000 registered tailors”, says Otunba Wasiu Taiwo of the Nigeria Union of Tailors. “We are still counting.”…[more]