Homegrown Shandis, Mama Kea and Unrecognized Art all run by Mabuza
Johannesburg – Starting your own business from scratch isn’t easy. Starting another two and running them, both successfully, is even harder. Although the challenge was tough, one entrepreneur decided to make his dreams come through and the hard work has finally paid off.
From a young age Sicelo Mabuza, Multi-business owner, had a passion for selling everything and anything. From books to sweets, Mabuza fell in love with the business trade and selling anything that people would buy. Coming from Mpumalanga, it was only when he came to Johannesburg that he was able to start his journey of running multiple successful brands.
Gaining the inspiration to start Mama Kea
Mama Kea is a shoe brand with a bizarre but beautiful twist. All their shoes are hand woven and equipped with a comfortable sneaker sole. Mama Kea steams from Mama, meaning mother while Kea, meaning home where the heart, soul and spirit is. The bran was founded in 2016 but it wouldn’t have been possible without the online magazine called Vuka Darkie, said Mabuza.
“In 2015 we started a brand called Vuka Darkie. It’s an online magazine. There we used to do research about the ancient history of Africa. The history that was not easily accessible on commercial platforms. Upon doing research on black owned businesses, they gave birth to what we have today. We also celebrate this ancient technique of weaving products which is called crochet. We also realised that ancient Africans used to have this skill of waving shoes and they used to transfer it from generation to generation.”
While doing research on this Mabuza found that these skills were sorely lacking in the community. These skills were not being passed down and were dying. With just a few elders left who had these skills, Mabuza decided to ask for their help in creating the brand. This did two things, created a business, and also helped to preserve this skill.
“We realised that these are dying skills in South Africa and also Africa as a whole. There are only a few elders that are left with this skill. We identified these Elders and told them we wanted to create a brand that would be an integration of the young and old. We also wanted to preserve this skill that is dying so that we can showcase the Afrocentric skills to the world. Then we started the brand called Mama Kea.”
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Where the designs for Mama Kea come from
Mama Kea is a special brand in the sense that it combined the knowledge of the youth and the elders to create something beautiful. It took the knowledge of marketing that young adults possess and mixed it with the knowledge of weaving the elders’ poses. This combination brought the young and old generation together to save an ancient art.
The designs of the products are simply marvellous. They are a thing of beauty. These designs resonate with the African community because they are rooted from African culture, explained Mabuza.
“Our designs come from African cultures. Pan Africanism and also, they come from nature, from tribes. We check Khoisan and see the colour synergy and then fuse it into our designs. We check nature because Africa is rich with nature and take that and fuse it in our design. The minerals that we have, we celebrate that into our design and that’s why Mama Kea is such a wonderful brand.”
The creation of Homegrown Shandis
Homegrown Shandis is a collaborative platform that exercises an innovative business model and process of retail. It is the result of wanting to bring different brands under one roof and make them accessible to the wider market. There are a lot of services that young businesses can’t afford. This often leads to them dying even though they may have brilliant ideas. Homegrown Shandis was created to also solve these problems, explained Mabuza.
“We created this business model that will test this collaboration thing where we will cut our costs and share everything. When we get opportunities, we make sure we trickle down the benefits to everyone. We tested that for two years and we gathered enough information.”
There are currently ten brands that operate under Homegrown Shandis. These brands are from the township and have a small-scale production line. Being under Homegrown Shandis allows them to cut many costs and helps to keep them financially stable. The hope is to open up many more stores and offer this exciting opportunity to many more small-time entrepreneurs.
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What makes being an entrepreneur so exciting for Mabuza
Being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone. One must have this certain desire in them to always be on the lookout for more. Mabuza, for example, is a person who comes from the science field. He never had any business training but his desire to create his own brands led him to study and acquire the necessary skills to become who he is today. It is this thirst for knowledge that makes being an entrepreneur so exciting to him.
“The favourite part for me about being an entrepreneur is the fact that I get to acquire a lot of information. Whenever I meet with other entrepreneurs, they have a lot of information that I cannot really access in a comfortable space or wherever except for being in the entrepreneurship industry. I realised that this is kind of expensive information. On a random day, you’d have to pay a lot of money to acquire this information but in entrepreneurship you tend to access this whole lot of rich information that enriches you as a person and we grow.”
Mabuza credits being in the entrepreneurship industry as one of the reasons for being a better person. There are certain good traits he acquired only because of being in this industry. He also had to learn to give up other traits to become a better businessperson. These traits that he left behind only made him a better person.
The next steps for Mabuza
Besides Mama Kea, Homegrown Shandis and Vuka Darkie, Mabuza also the founder of Unrecognized Art. That is a brand development company that renders visual content creation services. The future is filled with hope for Mabuza who hopes to open many more Homegrown Shandis. He already has one operating in Newtown Junction mall.
“We have a commercial store now in Newtown Junction that needs to grow. We now have Mama Kea that has this wonderful product that needs to hit the international market. I’ve also started a venture of filmmaking on Unrecognized Arts. I feel these are the three spaces that we need to touch.”
