TWO young Clydebank entrepreneurs insist they are just getting started with their business-building empire after launching Scotland’s “first and only fully integrated modelling agency".
Aaliyah Tausney, 19, and Kanesly Tait, 21, have started NovaUK, a company that looks after social media models and influencers to star in promotional videos online for client brands.
After kicking off Nova in September, the Bankie pair work closely with business partners Owen Brown and Ahron Ashraf, who started up social media marketing firm DesignedUK in June.
Owen and Ahron asked Aaliyah and Kanesly to star in their early videos and it was then that the girls realised a business opportunity of their own lay in wait.
Speaking exclusively to the Clydebank Post, Aaliyah said: “We started getting quite a lot of enquiries for them to do marketing, but me and Kanesly just thought, people are going to get sick of our faces, because it was just constantly us two, and it meant we were out every night of the week trying to film different TikTok’s and Instagram stuff.
“So, me, Kanesly, Ahron and Owen came up with the idea of - if we have a list of people we can use, to be in all these social media advertisements we are using, if we had a big list of people, then we could create an agency.
“We now represent all of these different influencers and models, and they advertise in all the brands we do through the marketing guys at DesignedUK.”
Aaliyah and Kanesly have already signed up influencers such as Ella Thompson, other half of Rangers ace Ross McCausland, and Connor McGhee, who recently starred in Celebs Go Dating.
And they are set to host a brand model fashion show called Eclipse at the Corinthian on Friday, November 24, described by the girls as “an immersive experience blending fashion and social media".
Kanesly added: “We just thought to ourselves; why don’t we just be bold? This is really bold but we may as well take a risk and do something that no one has done before.”
The girls put their early success down to the fortune of their youth, admitting growing up in the age of the smart phone gives them an advantage over competitors.
Aaliyah continued: “I think the reason why it has been going so well, is we are four young people and I think when you are young, you know what the trends are.
“We live on our phones, that’s just the ages we are, so we already know how to make things like TikTok videos.
“We all make our own content. We all had an idea of how to do it.
“We did look into it a little bit more, enhance our skills a bit.
“But when we first started, we all knew how to do it just because of the generation we are.”
Kanesly added: “We know what people our age like and that is our target audience.
“That’s why it has done so well; because we know what people our age like to watch.”
And how did they come up with the name for their fresh new business?
“I think Owen came up with Nova, because Nova means up-and-coming star,” Aaliyah finished.
“And we were like, this just fits us perfectly.
“We’re upcoming and we are new, and we are just going to keep going up and up.”
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