From Fashion to Management Finesse: Vivo Fashion Group’s management learning journey

In the fashion world, the final product often gets the spotlight, while hardworking teams behind the scenes go unnoticed. These teams bring Vivo’s creations to life, making sure affordable, stylish, and high-quality clothing is available for all women.

For over a decade, Vivo Fashion Group has been making women feel confident, comfortable, and fashionable without breaking the bank. Founded by Wandia Gichuru and Anne Marie Burugu in 2011, Vivo is East Africa’s fastest-growing fashion business. The company designs and manufactures all their clothing in Africa and is now East Africa’s largest ladies’ fashion brand.

With branches across Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, Vivo felt the need to improve their management approach to maximise business growth. They identified issues within their management team, such as missed deadlines, turnaround times and poor communication.

To address these challenges, Vivo partnered with AMI and introduced the Management Development Programme. Fourteen managers joined this six-month programme to develop essential skills for handling workplace challenges.

Before the programme, some team leaders struggled to motivate their teams, leading to communication problems and missed deadlines. The programme’s tool, “Getting The Message Across,” helped managers improve their communication skills, making it easier to convey messages and link outcomes to objectives.

Vivo values customer satisfaction, but delivering consistent service across multiple branches was challenging. The programme helped Emily Gor, the Regional Manager, create a community of
problem solvers.

“Continuous customer service training has improved our readiness to respond to client inquiries and concerns,” said Gor.

“As a result, the motivated sales team has increased customer satisfaction to 85%, sales conversion rose from 14% to 15%, and the average basket size grew by 113%. Additionally, 95% of the stores achieved at least 80% of their monthly targets.”

The programme addressed operational inefficiencies, leading to better productivity and financial savings. It helped the team reduce stock discrepancies by 70%, minimising losses and improving processes.

Vivo managers continue to implement the practices they learned ensuring ongoing improvements in their operations and team dynamics.

The results show that AMI was the right fit: 93% of participants feeling more effective at work and 100% indicating they would recommend AMI.

To read more stories in our 2023 Impact Report click here: ‘10 Years as an African Champion for Africa’s Business Champions’.