In person, Darkor Ofosu-Dorte is very unassuming.
You would never guess that the 26-year-old has spent the last six years building one of the fastest-growing swimsuit brands with no prior training or business knowledge.
Swims By Didi has set itself apart in the swimsuit segment in the country – a segment some could argue was virtually non-existent.
The brand is popular among young women, especially Gen Zs, who make up a majority of its customer base. Across its social media pages, which include Instagram, TikTok, and X, the brand has more than 40,000 followers.
But despite its successes and popularity, Darkor does not seem that fazed. By her own admission, she’s as surprised as everyone else at how popular the brand has become over the years.
Despite having been on a couple of podcasts and done some written interviews, Darkor herself can be described as an introvert who is not big on the limelight or being the center of attention.
During our interview, she says she doesn’t think her background is interesting enough for our written profile, suggesting that readers could watch or listen to podcasts to learn more about her.
In many ways, this is what makes Darkor an interesting personality to interview: A 26-year-old introverted female entrepreneur building a swimwear brand in a country that tends to lean conservative when it comes to clothing apparel.
But if you ask her, she sees what she does as just selling clothes and not making a big deal out of it.
“I wasn’t thinking [Swims By Didi] would be there next year, or the year after that. I was just selling,” she said when she initially started the brand.
Six years in, and there’s still a feeling that it’s not a big deal.
Introvert with a taste for design
Darkor grew up in Accra, Ghana. She is the youngest of eight siblings, her dad being a prominent lawyer and her mom a caterer.
Growing up, she wasn’t much for going out, not because she didn’t want to, but because she wasn’t really allowed to.
“My friends from school would be talking about something from the weekend, and I wasn’t allowed to go,” she said, recalling how her parents were strict about socialising outside.
She compensated with books, with television, with the kind of internal life that forms when the outside world is kept at a slight distance.
She watched the E! channel obsessively. She noticed the outfits. There was the “Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane” reality show. There were the Disney shows.
Fashion design crept in quietly, with encouragement from her godmother, who was an inspiration to dig deeper into the field.
She took courses at a fashion school while she was still at university. After all the training and knowledge, she decided to launch her first fashion brand.
Starting a Brand
Her first collection, a clothing line she had started before the pandemic, launched in October 2019.
Then the COVID lockdown came in March 2020, and everything paused.
Like everyone else, she stayed home and watched people share free online courses. She decided to learn marketing.
While her first brand, DarkorDorte, was slow to pick up, her next iteration, which was swimwear, made the biggest impact.
The inspiration for the bikini brand actually stemmed from frustrations. Darkor lamented about not being able to find a bikini in her size.
“I could never find a black bikini in Ghana. Whatever I tried, the sizing wasn’t for me,” she said.
Undeterred, she decided to make her own. She already had a manufacturer, the same woman she’d tracked down for her original clothing line.
She called her up and described what she wanted, giving her seven colourways to work with. Days later, she did a beach shoot with the new outfit.
She then announced a launch date to sell the outfits on what had been a food blog page she quietly repurposed.
On that day, she got five orders, which came as a surprise.
The Anonymous Founder
For the better part of a year, she kept her face off the brand entirely.
No founder bio. No “meet the designer” posts. Just the product, the imagery, and a brand name that gave nothing away.
One reason her face was not initially featured was due to parental pressure. Her father was concerned about how revealing the bikinis were.
It was only when, late the following year, she posted herself on her Snapchat wearing one of her own pieces, that people reacted. “Why have you never posted yourself?” they asked.
By then, many had already started figuring out that she was the person behind the brand.
As sales took off, she handled most of the processes by herself behind the scenes.
“I was putting the packages in bags myself. The rider would bring everything from the manufacturer, and I was just packing and sending. I didn’t think of it as quick or anything I couldn’t do.”
Building Quietly
Darkor practically did everything herself. Design, packaging, customer messages, and social media. She’d learned how to shoot, more or less, by studying what she saw working on other online accounts — not brands, just people, influencers, the friends she roped in.
“I was just doing what I saw was good,” she said, about copying the process of others online.
Although she had taken some marketing courses, the addition of fusing internet knowledge to the brand paid dividends.
Her team, when it eventually expanded, moved slowly. First, it was just her and the manufacturer. Then, when orders began arriving in batches of thirty to sixty, she asked a family member to help pack.
The social media presence grew through a method she describes with some reluctance, as a strategy: she posted behind-the-scenes footage, she built anticipation, and she showed process.
It resonated. A million views, on one of those posts, came and went.
“It sounds crazy,” she says, still incredulous of the work done. “But I can’t imagine that a million people are watching. Maybe it’s less than 300,000. Maybe.”
Swims By Didi now has a team of four, including Darkor herself. Although she declined to say how much revenue it makes, she says the business has been very fruitful, especially in 2025.
Building For The Future
The brand’s direction is becoming clearer to her now.
The initial product was swimwear. But resort wear is in the works. There are also plans for vacation clothing and, eventually, every swim accessory she can think of.
“Anything you think of when you think swim, I want you to come to us,” she said.
Interestingly, Darkor talks about this with the low-key certainty of someone who has already surprised themselves once and is no longer entirely discounting what might happen next.
She mentions wanting a physical store, but only if it makes sense — and in Ghana, she’s not yet convinced it does.
She talks about international shipping, about customers in the UK and Europe, about a diaspora audience hungry for something that signals home without being nostalgic about it.
Getting Over “Imposter Syndrome”
During our conversation, Darkor admits that she’s in a space where she sometimes feels “unprepared” for publicity.
She’s introverted, private, and often uncomfortable in rooms where people know her before she’s had time to prepare.
She recalls an episode in the past with delayed shipments of a swimwear product, which resulted in a small “confrontation” with a disgruntled customer in public.
“It was overwhelming. And it wasn’t a good feeling,” she recalled.
She says she learnt from that incident and has gotten better at communicating with customers.
Although they were initially reluctant about her modelling in her swimwear, Darkor’s father now tells others about the brand. He even asks design questions and occasionally shares details about his daughter’s business with friends.
Darkor is aware she needs to be more social with her business, but she’s still not comfortable with public speaking at events unless she’s “fully prepared”.
“I need to prepare for it. Unless it’s something that I’m so confident in,” she says, even going as far as to say she won’t hesitate to decline invitations if she doesn’t feel she’s ready.
Socially, Darkor is comfortable with solitude. Her favorite things to do involve watching TV shows, taking spontaneous trips to the cinema by herself, and being at the beach.
Over the course of the interview, the theme of her still being surprised at how far the swim brand has come keeps recurring.
“I was just doing anything,” she says of the brand’s popularity. “And right now it’s something. I’m still surprised.”
But there is a quiet confidence and determination to keep the brand growing steadily.
As far as an exit plan, she’s not certain, but she still wants to be in control and keep selling her designs.
“I feel like even if there’s no money, I’ll find a way to make sure there’s money in it.”
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