Liz Kitua is a designer and the owner of Kidosho Apparel, a boutique in Nairobi’s Kilimani area.
However, unbeknownst to many, the designer actually gave up on a career in aviation to venture into tailoring and fashion design.
Kitua attended flying school both in Kenya and South Africa, and even worked as a commercial pilot for five years before leaving her job.
“I attended flying school here for two years then transferred to a flight academy in South Africa to complete the course. I relocated in July 2008,” she said.
After moving back to Kenya, Kitua spent the better part of 2009 freelancing on no pay to build her flight hours as there were no readily available jobs.
As a result, she established Kidosho in mid-2010 as a side-hustle to pay her bills as she continued to build her flight hours.
Kidosho focused on traditional attire but she wanted to design modern and funky attire for women her age.
Sure enough, the idea worked and by 2013, Kidosho had already worked on some designs and had already built a clientbase.
“The working hours were intense though. My schedule had several local short flights with a few breaks in between and the pay didn’t match the hours,” she said.
Kitua also mentioned that her working environment did not align with her personal values, and she did not have the passion for the job as she had towards Kidosho.
At this point, she had rented a space for Kidosho and hired three tailors who previously worked at kibandas (stalls) in Umoja Market.
Kitua contemplated quitting her job and after two years of rigorous reflection, she finally resigned from her job in 2013 to venture into tailoring full-time.
“My mom was very supportive. She said that she hoped I knew what I was doing. All my brother said was, ‘do you’. My friends cheered me because they knew how passionate I was about this
“The only person who didn’t give me his nod was my dad. It hurt me a lot. He’s also a pilot. He wondered why he would spend over Ksh 9 million in flying school only for me to quit to run a kiosk as a fundi,” she stated.
The move that followed included moving her shop from Nairobi West to Ngong Road and expanded her team of tailors to five.
Just like any other business, Kitua mentioned that cash flow was not always constant, however, noting that the good months were good but the bad ones were terrible.
“There are those months when I would pay all what I needed but had nothing for myself to take home,” she said.
Moving forward, Kitua hopes to start exporting her designs abroad.
