From homeless to Girls' Home: She now has an online clothing business and a stall at Geylang Ramadan bazaar

Meeting this lively and friendly entrepreneur at the Geylang Ramadan bazaar, one would never have guessed her difficult past involving homelessness, unemployment and a stint at the Singapore Girls' Home when she was only 14.

But such was life for Nina Zazali growing up, and now at 36 years old with a thriving business selling modest wear, Hari Raya outfits and children's clothing, it feels like things are looking up.

Speaking to AsiaOne on April 5, Nina was candid about her experiences in running Love, Nina Zazali at the Ramadan bazaar in Geylang Serai and how it all began.

Nina kickstarted her business at home by selling pre-loved clothes via Facebook livestreams six years ago. It was a move born out of necessity, she said, having lost her job as a sales director at an e-commerce platform not long before then.

"This left me in a very bad situation," she said, adding that she had also just gotten married at the time. "I had to do something to survive."

Finding a community of supporters

Undeterred by her circumstances, Nina continued to hustle her way by selling clothes one Facebook livestream at a time, gaining a modest following of her own along the way.

Her Facebook page has so far garnered 32,000 followers and 23,000 likes, and her business account on Instagram has around 14,700 followers.

In addition to this online business, she eventually decided to take part in the Geylang bazaar as a vendor in 2019, returning in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19 and again this year.

Nina believes that setting up a stall at the bazaar will help her to not only "reach out to more people who do not shop online", but also to meet her community of loyal supporters whom she normally only sees virtually on her livestreams.

"[When] I do livestreams, I would call out their [usernames] but I don't know who they are," she explained. "So when I see them in person [at the bazaar], it's like, 'Oh! You're so-and-so? Nice to meet you!'"

"They will always come down to support me," stated Nina.

She and her supporters have even formed a connection, she shared. "The people who watch me on Facebook, we're already a community. We even 'fist bump' on livestreams."

"So I believe that the people who have supported me from day one and my new followers that come down here to support me, we're connected."

Moving past Covid-19

Nina has been through her share of ups and downs in setting up shop at the bazaar, most recently in 2022 when the popular night market came back, though at a smaller scale with Covid-19 safe management measures in place.

Nina described her experience returning last year as "super chaotic" because the pandemic made it "really hard" to operate her business smoothly.

"We had back-to-back Covid-19 cases among our staff, so it was a challenge managing the stall," she recounted.

"After one staff [member had] recovered, this person would take over [another] person [who had Covid-19]. So it was on a rotational basis."

Fast forward to 2023, with Singapore moving beyond the pandemic, and Nina can breathe a sigh of relief.

"It feels like how it was in 2019 [again]," she said fondly of the atmosphere at the bazaar this year. "It's back to the norm [and] business as usual."

This year, Nina also shared that her stall has a bigger space, allowing her and her team to get creative by setting up a feature wall adorned with flowers, which they decorated on their own by hand.

Never a dull day at work

Business as usual still means a busy routine for Nina in ensuring her stall runs like clockwork throughout the month – all while being a parent to four young kids, doing livestreams on Facebook and even owning a gallery for her clothing brand at 3 Kim Chuan Lane.

Describing her day-to-day routine this month with the bazaar going on, Nina shared: "I usually start my day by sending my kids to school at around 8.30am. Then I'll come down to my store, which I call my gallery. The gallery is still in operation as we speak, even with the bazaar going on. 

"I would do livestreams there for about two hours. My staff will open the stall here [at Geylang Serai] and I'll come down to check that everything's ready.

"If all is [well], I'll go back to my gallery to do livestreams again. I will also need to tally the stocks there. Then I'll pick up my kids from school, break fast at home and then come back here to the bazaar [at night]."

Phew – definitely not your regular nine-to-five job.

A troubled past

Her routine may sound like an ordeal for some, but Nina is no stranger to overcoming hardships.

Not one to shy away from talking about her past, Nina opened up about her troubled childhood, admitting that her rebelliousness as a young teen led to a two-and-a-half-year stay at the Singapore Girls' Home and a strained relationship with her mother.

"It was because I was very naughty. I was beyond parental control," Nina shared.

"Before going in, I was already at my worst [behaviour]. You could never imagine. I wasn't going home. I was doing things that a 14-year-old shouldn't be doing."

Nina's life was riddled with further challenges as she grew older. She got married at 20 and then got divorced. At one point, following an argument with her mother, she left the house with her first-born baby, who was only a few months old at the time.

As she had a job then at a car dealership, she was still able to afford a babysitter to care for her newborn while she stayed at a friend's place or resorted to sleeping by the staircase of the babysitter's house.

But money was still tight. She even recalled a time when she wasn't able to afford proper meals for herself and resorted to splitting a plate of maggi goreng over the course of a day. "I divided [the portions] into three so that I'd have some for breakfast, some for lunch and some for dinner."

Things started picking up once she was able to get a rental unit. Shortly after, she met her now-husband, Suhari Mustaffa, and the couple tied the knot in 2016.

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New beginnings

Looking back on her life and seeing where she is now, Nina said: "I have stabilised myself and I wouldn't [have thought] that I would be able to come this far, but I did. So I'm proud of who I've become."

She was fairly modest about how business at the bazaar has fared so far since Ramadan began, revealing that "business has been okay; it can be better and it will be better".

She remained optimistic that business will pick up later in the month. "It's always the case, I've done this a couple of times. It's always the last week of the bazaar when things get super hectic."

For now, meeting people and customers is enough to keep Nina going. "Seeing little girls wearing or trying on my [brand's] outfits, it just melts my heart. Like, I'm doing the right thing."

Also read: First-time vendor The Messy Bros joined Geylang Ramadan bazaar on a whim - they've now sold 'more than 500kg' of burgers

shakylla.saifudin@asiaone.com

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