Fashion mum goes pro

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
A MOTHER-of-three has started her designing business to support her young family.
Wandid Amini Korimbo told The National that she decided to go into the designing business because of her three children-Kilapate, 9, Raymond Jr, 8 and Rava, 3-and her family.
“I started a small business three years ago by bringing in ready-made products to sell,” she said.
But she decided to venture into something else when she saw others doing the same thing.
She and husband Raymond Korimbo registered the business Niugini Native Limited on June 23, 2014.
As a logo, her husband designed the Nokondi from Goroka and tattoos from her village to resemble their children’s originality “because the business is for them”.
She also noticed that most of the designing companies in operation focused their designs on Fijian and other Pacific Islands motifs.
“We felt that coming from the largest Pacific Islands country in the region, it was a pity that we wore and promote the artwork and cultural motifs from smaller nations when our country had the most culturally diverse traditional art designs,” she said.
So her corporate and casual clothing lines in her fashion designs are based mainly on the different traditional arts from the 22 provinces in PNG.
“My corporate clients are the Origin (PNG) Limited, Department of National Planning and Monitoring, ExxonMobil, and National Fisheries Authority. We are still supplying corporate uniforms and tuana wear to them,” she said.
Last year, she tested her fashion idea on the Stella Magazine runway during a fashion show in Port Moresby.
“That was the first time I brought my designs out to the public and that was when Jack’s of PNG saw my products.”
Jack’s entered into an agreement with her last year to provide a market for her products. This was formalised yesterday. Jack’s will be selling her products.
“For us designers, we can design anything and everything we want to. But at the end of the day, someone has to showcase our products,” she added.
“And I am thankful to Jack’s for that opportunity to provide a platform for me to sell my products.”
Jack’s of PNG manager corporate business Yogesh Samy said when they started the business in PNG, they were getting mostly Fijian products.
“We decided later to engage local Papua New Guinea products because we are operating in the country,” Samy said.