Many of us get ideas for products and services but few of us take a chance on realising them. Helen Grange found three women who did just that
SOAPBOX KIDS
Kristin Masters
Fashion designer and mother Kristin Masters landed on the idea of making beautiful, handcrafted gowns and dresses for little girls simply because she couldn’t find anything in the shops for the first birthday party of a friend’s daughter.
“I scoured the shops for weeks but came up empty-handed. I complained to my husband about how little there is out there aside from toy shop dresses made in China, and he said to me, ‘Why don’t you make something yourself?’”
“I did make it, with a little pair of shoes and matching headband. The response from other friends and parents was amazing, and that’s where the seed for Soapbox germinated,” says Masters.
Masters started getting informal orders from family and friends, and for a year-and-a-half, she researched what was available, if and where her competitors were and what her market demographic would be.
Last March she launched Soapbox as an online boutique, but the unexpected demand for her gorgeous creations has catapulted her into selling from three stores – Koco Bino in Sandton, and in Cape Town, Petit Love and Baby Belle.
The outfits sell from R330 to R2 300, and are for girls between three months and seven years old.
“I’ve been in the fashion industry for 16 years, so I already had the infrastructure (a factory in Hyde Park with six staff). It was just a matter of expanding what we do to make smaller garments. I do all the designs, and every single item is bespoke and handcrafted,” she says.
- Visit www.soapboxkids.co.za or www.facebook.com/mysoapboxkids
MONSTER MOOGLE APP
Danielle Orkin
Danielle Orkin, an artist and “tech entrepreneur”, was lecturing BCom students at Vega School of Brand Leadership, teaching them how to make a digital collage.”By way of example I decided to write a simple kids e-book and self-publish it. Long story short, the e-book became an interactive iPad storybook app called Monster Moogle,” she says.
Monster Moogle has since won two international awards, a Silver MomsChoiceAward for “the best in family media, products, and services”, as well as a Parent’s Choice award for mobile apps.
“It’s been an incredible journey. In the US these kinds of apps are big, but in South Africa, they’re very new,” says Orkin.
The Monster Moogle app allows children to read a book and then write and illustrate short stories to share.
It has four distinct sections: story mode, interactive story mode, characters and a collage maker, and in each section children can immerse themselves into a plot based on their own imagination.
“Kids get inspiration from the story and can then run with their own creations and make their own story. It’s highly interactive, with music,” explains Orkin.
The full download, including the four sections, costs about $1.99 (R21) on iTunes.
“At the time I designed it as an e-book, it was really just a side dream. I like telling stories and as an artist I’ve gravitated to the digital world, so this came about almost naturally. But it was only when I got partners and funding that it launched. “It cost about R500 000 to get to this point, with big investments of money and time from Seed Engine (start-up accelerator) and Fontera (eCommerce development company).”
Orkin still regards it as a “little arty venture” that needs more investment to grow. “The awards certainly put Monster Moogle on the map, but I’d like it to be available on iPhone, for instance,” she says, adding that “in the digital realm success can be brief, because the landscape is always changing”.
Mmabatho Mokiti
Companies employing young graduates are crying out for higher standards of maths education, and this is what gave rise to Mmabatho Mokiti’s good idea.
A mathematician by profession, the idea germinated while she was still at the University of Johannesburg, tutoring students for extra money.
“That’s when I was first bitten by the education bug,” she says. “I went as far as registering my own company, but that’s as far as I got. It was a pipe dream that I hoped one day to get off the ground.”
In 2011, a friend told her about the SME Toolkit competition, sponsored by IBM. She entered and her entry sailed through rounds one and two, and then to her surprise, she won. “That’s the day my life changed.”
As part of her prize, Mmabatho was provided with a direct link to an IBM mentor, and from there, she developed the business plan that “catapulted me into business”.
Three years on, Mathemaniacs, a full service maths, science and accounting tutoring company aimed at bringing the fun into learning, employs 20 tutors and has helped train and educate more than 400 learners.
“The most noticeable learning gaps are in basic maths, like addition, subtraction, multiplication and especially division,” she says.
Maths training is a fairly competitive industry, Mmabatho says. “People who use well-known tutoring companies are usually loyal to that company and it becomes difficult to convince them to change. And because our business is service and client based, if one client is unhappy this could potentially ruin our reputation. So we have to make sure that our clients receive the best service.”
To help her idea grow, she introduced other avenues of teaching, like camps and learner/educator support programmes, “which we noticed very few tutoring companies do”.
“We are starting to tap into more educator and learner support programmes, where we co-operate with disadvantaged and rural schools which pay for educator training and after-school programmes. We are also looking into e-learning because in this way, our clients will be able to access our services from anywhere,” says Mmabatho.
“Mathemaniacs is exactly the kind of success story we’d like to see replicated in market,” says Rebecca Munyuki, an IBM SME Toolkit facilitator.
- Visit www.mathemaniacstut.co.za or call 010 590 5731