In 2019, when she was barely 21, Tosin Oyegoke started a waist bead brand, Waist Beads by Nora. Like an epiphany, she began to see women’s bodies clearly, understanding how waist beads offered her customers different – often positive – views about their bodies and how they were behaving. She became a listener to their feedback and what their recurrent purchases said.

“Almost immediately after I started the business, I would have my customers talk to me about their sex life, their waist, their weight,” Oyegoke says. “I would get some emails from customers saying, since I started wearing this, I fell in love with my body even more. And at that point, I just changed my slogan to ‘fall in love with your body’.”

Waist Beads by Nora grew expeditiously into a premium waist bead brand that has served over 10,000 women globally — even after Oyegoke relocated from Nigeria to the UK shortly after the brand’s inception. Then, seven years after she launched her first brand, she introduced the world to Bèbèdí, a first of its kind.