the pride of Africa's women entrepreneurs
Mary-Anne Grobler & Kara Furter, of Matter of Fakt (South Africa)
South Africa is renowned for its precious and semi-precious stones and for one of the country’s up-and-coming jewellery design brands, Matter of Fakt, these wonderful raw materials provide all the inspiration needed to create unique contemporary pieces.
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Rachel Phiri, founder of Silverbox Jewellery (Zimbabwe)
Zimbabwean jewellery designer, Rachel Phiri, founded her company Silverbox Jewellery based on a passion for beautiful accessories and an inbuilt creativity that was looking for an outlet. The result is a jewellery business being built across two countries in Africa, and involving the family and their talents in its growth and development.
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Asma Dukanda, founder of Mokopu (South Africa)
The African marketplace for beautifully designed and crafted baby and children’s wear and toy products is continually growing, and with it are emerging some wonderful new design talents in this space. South African entrepreneur, Asma Dukanda, is just such a talent, creating a great new niche for herself and her clothing and products, all of which celebrate the best of the country’s traditional fabric design culture.
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Laura Nyahuye, founder of AdornU (Zimbabwe)
There is a real sense of drama about the design work of Laura Nyahuye and her brand, AdornU, who is challenging convention and creating sculptural adornments for the body that speak volumes for the individuality and confidence of the wearer.
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Robyn Victor, founder of August
South Africa currently has a rich fashion scene that is building a significant fan-base, both at home and abroad, and the August resort-inspired, lifestyle clothing brand is one of the labels that is getting noticed, for all the right reasons. August’s design philosophy is pure and sophisticated, inspired by both the resort and casual sides of the South African lifestyle, and appealing to the fashion-minded, modern woman.
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Sera Holland, founder of Handmade by Me
For women entrepreneurs, their personal journeys to setting up their businesses and realising their dreams are always unique - some are very focused on long-held identified goals, whilst others are almost accidental or organic in nature. South African-based textile designer, Sera Holland, falls into the latter category of an entrepreneur who never set out to be in business, but ended up discovering a love of textile printing and built the most amazing business around it.
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Teta Isibo, founder of Inzuki Designs
Rwandan jewellery and accessory brandbuilder, Teta Isibo, is passionate about bold design and harnessing the creative craftsmanship talent of local women artisans to create unique pieces that have an instantly recognisable Inzuki Design style and aesthetic.
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Ashley Heather, founder of Ashley Heather Jewellery
When LoA heard about South African jewellery designer, Ashley Heather, and how she is creating beautiful, handcrafted and contemporary jewellery pieces from, of all things, precious metals reclaimed from computer circuit boards, we just had to find out more.
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Claire Nouvel, founder and designer, TiLT Handmade Jewels
Claire Nouvel is a young French-born, but South Africa-based jewellery designer who is deeply inspired by African culture and uses that inspiration for the creation of her unique, contemporary jewellery pieces, each one celebrating the local metals and materials used and preserving their integrity and authenticity.
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Janet Pulford, founder of Gemboree
As part of LoA’s Focus on Africa’s Women Jewellery Designers this month, we spoke to Janet Pulford, the Founder and Creative Director of South African company, Gemboree, about her current collection, its design inspiration, and what customers can look forward to in the coming weeks.
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Pietie Coetzee, founder of PC15
Pietie Coetzee is a field hockey legend who recently retired from the sport and has started a new phase in her life building a sports company and brand. As a top-level international sports woman, Pietie had an amazing, record-breaking career and she now harnesses that same passion and determination for her new business as a sportspreneur and in her advocacy work campaigning for cancer awareness.
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Rainat Komolafe, founder of Babies Essence, Nigeria
For new parents-to-be in Nigeria, planning for the new arrival can be a little daunting, particularly if it is a first baby. So, entrepreneur Rainat Komolafe has created a startup business, Babies Essence, taking all the guess work and effort out of the process, providing a genuinely one-stop shop for everything needed to welcome the new member of the family into the world.
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Tamara Watkins, co-founder of shopDOKU.com
One of the key challenges often facing talented and ambitious African women fashion designers is how to access global markets and successfully position their brands to international buyers. Tamara Watkins and her business partner Akila Hunte have a solution - their passion for raising awareness of emerging design talent, particularly from the African continent, led the team to set up an online marketplace, shopDOKU.com, retailing the creations of emerging designers to buyers in North America and the United Kingdom.
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Amy Sinovich, founder of Resonate by amy
There is something truly wonderful about translating the power of storytelling into beautiful pieces of bespoke, wearable art that connect on a deeply personal level with the person commissioning it. Amy Sinovich is an incredibly talented South African jewellery designer that is one such storyteller par excellence. Every unique handcrafted piece she creates from precious metals and semi-precious stones tells its own story, inspired by nature, poetry and the life of the person for whom it is made.
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Sheila Mokgoadi, founder of Azura Luxury Handcrafts
Inspired by the unique, joyous nature of traditional African jewellery design, Sheila Mokgoadi’s luxury brand, Azura Luxury Handcrafts, has created a range of bold, chic and highly desirable pieces that appeals to the most sophisticated global buyers. Her dedication to ensuring the highest levels of craftsmanship, combined with a fiercely modern design aesthetic, are what make this African luxury jewellery brand so unique.
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Rapelang Rabana, founder & CEO of Rekindle Learning
A long-term interest in learning and education, combined with a belief that mobile and internet technology will be instrumental in solving a number of socio-economic challenges at scale, led successful techpreneur, Rapelang Rabana, to establish Rekindle Learning. This highly innovative learning and development company is using the power of mobile and computer learning applications to enable access to knowledge in the palm of their hands.
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Natalie & Kim Ellis, founders of The Joinery
Around the world, there is a growing awareness about the need for a more ethically mindful and less environmentally impactful approach to be taken by the fashion industry. Two South African fashionpreneurs are passionately committed to a new Slow Fashion movement which combines a passion for design with a more environmental friendly approach and footprint, and a strong social conscience.
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Ugochi Ugbomeh, co-founder of Tranzit, Nigeria
Ugochi Ugbomeh is a woman who thinks big and harnesses of the power of technology to make a difference. Her entrepreneurial vision is for her company to become a curator of truly world-class transportation, location based and mobility services in Africa, effectively moving people and things from one destination to another.
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In the highly specialist and competitive world of the health and beauty industry, there is one woman who is successfully combining traditional African medicine with modern science to create world-class products for people of colour. Eunice Cofie is a woman entrepreneur harnessing her passion for science to make a difference to people’s lives and, at the same, build a new global health and beauty powerhouse.
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Lisa Ackroyd, founder of Colony, South Africa
There is something wonderfully evocative about wandering through Lisa Ackroyd’s incredible Johannesburg-based Colony store and studio, and seeing at first-hand the most beautiful and meticulously hand-crafted leather accessories being made. The sights, sounds and smells of leather being hand-worked by Lisa and her dedicated team of craftspeople, all of whom have been trained by her, are truly memorable.
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