Johannesburg - Siphelele Dlamini is possibly showing Sowetan entrepreneurs, and other black business people, how to regenerate the conurbation of suburbs that is Soweto through her unlikely upmarket shop - created by transforming two back rooms in corrugated zinc shacks.
It took Dlamini, no relation to the writer, two years to convert her shacks into a shop she calls NtoZinhle Accessories, complete with dark green walls and mall-worthy off-white ceramic tiles.
She proceeded to install - wait for it - an EFT transaction machine for sales.
This completes the shop’s unmistakable upmarket air.
Dlamini had to overcome bankers’ scepticism about her installing the equipment in a Soweto backroom-for-a-shop.
“However, I managed to convince them through the strength of my bank account -I had been banking my sales finances consistently.
“I have a clientele who use credit and debit cards.
“I managed to persuade my bank to let the business have the FET system here in Soweto.
“Besides, it’s just to show that whatever they can have in malls we can also have in Soweto.”
Dlamini’s fashion items are must-have accessories.
The handmade jewellery is created mostly by women in Mayimayi in inner-city east Joburg.
I came across NtoZinhle Accessories on Instagram through a referral by fashion designer Sandi Mazibuko of FabroSanz.
Dlamini has used her social media savvy, especially her effective use of Instagram, to grow the business.
She also sells her jewellery products and promotes sales she has at her shop on Phiri Street, which is just two streets off Vilakazi Street, where Nelson Mandela and Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu used to live and which is swarming with tourists.
Dlamini has garnered more than 17 600 followers on Instagram for her business, showing that social media are an effective tool in marketing, with virtually no setting up or operational costs. They require only data usage costs and the dedication of time.
“Oh, yes, Instagram has helped my business grow in leaps and bounds,” Dlamini said.
“My marketing and promotion of NtoZinhle Accessories on Instagram actually tripled my sales.
Find her products under the handle @NtoZinhle_Accessories with the unabashed promotional line: “No 1 accessories brand.”
Dlamini runs marketing and promotional campaigns on social media driven by online hashtags, a metadata tag that enables users easy access to content with specific themes.
It is one of the social media network’s effective tools of marketing and branding.
Explaining how her shack-cum-backroom shop gained traction on Instagram, Dlamini says: “At the time I was running a #shortleft campaign to my shop as fashion shack.
“It was a big risk that I was taking persuading people to come shop in Soweto. But it was successful. People were surprised by the set-up when they came through.”
Speaking of risk, Dlamini mentions that she has been helped by the SAPS’s vigilant policing of the Vilakazi Street precinct due to the continual presence of tourists from other parts of the world.
Soweto has high violent crimes rates where there is least police visibility.
One of the factors that is hindering business development in Soweto is the high incidence of robbery.
“I have not experienced any business burglary or robbery,” Dlamini said.
She lives with her husband and their three children in an imposingly fortified and trendy home, complete with a vast upstairs patio with an art nouveau steel balustrade. That their home is in the Vilakazi Street precinct is simply fortuitous for her.
Despite the large number of tourists, Dlamini’s business is not about selling exotic curios to them.”I never set out to sell to tourists, but they do come and are happy to find authentic African jewellery that is not airport material.
“I’ve no two prices for locals and tourists - I just have standard prices that are affordable for my clientele. Besides, tourist guides blacklist you when you exploit tourists - when you charge one price for tourists and another for locals.
“I have pop-up events around the country that target my domestic clientele. For instance, I recently went to Cape Town for a June 27 pop-up where I traded with fashion designers.”
It was at a June 16 pop-up shop - set up by Dlamini at her home with marketing manager-turned-fashion designer Mazibuko and fashion designer Nqobile Tshalata, a former journalist in Durban who has launched the label Dainty Frocks - that I chanced upon NtoZinhle Accessories.
Shoppers at the pop-up kept the trio and their five assistants busy from 11am until closing time at 5pm.
To use a popular Americanism, the pop-up was poppin’.
Dlamini employs four shop assistants: two full-time and two part-time.
She also has what she calls a “crew bus”, a well-branded panel van that takes staff and stock to pop-up shopping events and fetches stock from her suppliers.
Dlamini is proud that her suppliers are low-income, rural women who trade in the mainly Zulu community in Mayimayi.
“I get to empower my suppliers for I source only locally produced jewellery. They are mostly women,” she beamed with pride.
Dlamini has managed to keep her prices low and beat the competition at malls through what, for a venture that began as a start-up, has proved to be a favourable location.
She has decided against selling her high-end items for the modern woman from a shopping mall.
“I’m able to compete with my prices because I don’t have the high overheads of running a boutique in a mall.
“Shopping malls have high rents, which make a boutique shop such as mine have high overheads, and these are passed on to customers through the prices. Through my being in Orlando West I’m able to offer exclusivity and affordability.
“My jewellery is uniquely made for my shop and in limited quantities.
“My prices are affordable for the clients who are around me. Exclusivity and competitive prices are my cutting edge.
“They make my clientele willing to drive to Soweto to purchase my jewellery.”
Sunday Independent
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