Meet the Chief Executive Officer of the much-talked-about jewelry manufacturing and retailing company making waves in Nigeria today, Hannah Ephraim, Oluwatosin Sodimu, who also doubles as the Creative Director. After 10 years, the skillful entrepreneur shared the tales and resilience of the local company producing impeccable, international-standard jewelry. Ayodeji Ake writes
The old axiom: ‘never dream about success, work for it‘, by Estée Lauder, who was an American businesswoman and entrepreneur, today, best explains the achievements of a business enthusiast, Sodimu, through Hannah Ephraim, for the past 10 years and still counting.
Hannah Ephraim is a sustainable jewelry manufacturing and retailing company in Nigeria, Africa. We specialize in the manufacturing and retailing of jewelry, ranging from necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, cufflinks, metal tags, lapels, etc., using stainless steel jewelry metal because it is recyclable and hypoallergenic. We are the first stainless steel jewelry manufacturing company in West Africa.
For the jewelry brand, the mission is to create sustainable, affordable and environmentally friendly stainless-steel jewelry products through offering customised high-fashion pieces for the African and global market. While the vision remains to be one of the leading sustainable jewelry manufacturing companies and retailing brands around the world, the goal in the next five years is to be Africa’s biggest stainless steel jewelry manufacturer, will be producing and supplying jewelry for the whole African market and the global market thereby putting Africa on the map as an industrialized jewelry hub.
In a recent tete-a-tete, she reminisced on how the business began. “We started our brand as an online jewelry retailing brand in the year 2015, buying and selling stainless steel jewelry. In 2018, we advanced into laser engraving on stainless steel jewelry for the sole purpose of gifting these pieces of jewelry to family, friends and loved ones. We were the first Jewelry brand to do this in Nigeria, where you can engrave names, dates and words on affordable jewelry using a laser engraving machine. Today, a lot of businesses on social media sell personalized jewelry with engravings. We got registered as a business name in 2018 and currently a limited liability company in the year 2022. We started our manufacturing section in the year 2022, thereby making us advance into both jewelry manufacturing and retailing.
“We started production of stainless-steel jewelry in Nigeria when the borders were shut during COVID-19, and there was high demand. Imported jewelry products couldn’t make their way into the country. Nigerian jewelry brands had to reach out to us for personalized jewelry. For us, we sold a lot in wholesale without running ads, but that moment exposed a huge gap; Africa had no stainless-steel jewelry manufacturing company. That insight became our turning point, and in 2022, we officially started stainless steel jewelry manufacturing.”
Achievements: Currently, we’ve produced and sold over 10,000 jewelry pieces to more than 3,000 customers, and we’ve empowered almost 100 women through our reselling platform and mentorship programme, in which one of our mentees bought her first engraving machine. We are working towards increasing our production capacity to 100,000 jewelry pieces annually, and by the fifth year, one million jewelry pieces annually.
Apart from being a jewelry manufacturer, the entrepreneur whose name may not ring a bell but brand speaks volume, Oluwatosin Sodimu, unknown to many is an advocate for women empowerment across Africa. As one of Nigeria’s young female CEOs, her brand has grown over the past decade to become a symbol of strength, elegance and African craftsmanship.
She has a background in diplomacy and international relations. She has also successfully been able to blend creativity with strategic insight. Her journey into the jewelry industry began from a passion for timeless beauty, but quickly evolved into a mission to build Africa’s first stainless steel jewelry manufacturing hub, reduce import dependence, and create sustainable jobs for women across the continent.
Under her leadership, Hannah Ephraim has expanded beyond retail into manufacturing and dropshipping for other brands, and recently launched JewlAR by HE, an augmented reality (AR) platform that allows customers to virtually try on jewelry, an innovative move that places the brand at the intersection of fashion and technology.
Sodimu is not just building a business; she’s building a movement. Her commitment to empowering African women through entrepreneurship and skills acquisition is at the heart of everything she does.
As Ephraim marks 10 years of bold creativity, resilience, and growth, Oluwatosin remains focused on her long-term goal: to make Africa a globally recognized industrialized jewelry hub — led by women, driven by innovation, and rooted in heritage.
In 2019, she got into the Road To Growth Cherie Blair Foundation programme in partnership with EDC, also the Academy of Women Entrepreneurs by the US Consulate, Lagos. We’ve also gone for several UN Women Gender Affirmative Procurement Programmes. She won a Facebook COVID Grant in 2020. In 2024, she got into the Lagos State Female Founders and Funders programme, where she had the opportunity to do her first exhibition. She also had her first exhibition in the US during the FITCC Houston exhibition in October 2023.
Today, she exports to Benin Republic, Ghana and South Africa, as African countries are the target market. She also exports to the UK, US, Canada and Ireland.
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