Molefi Nkwete cannot forget how far he has come as an entrepreneur.
“I started out small,” he says. “Like very, very small.”
The Hip Hop-inspired clothing chain Mafia Soul currently stands at four stores in Gaborone, and one in South Africa’s economic capital Johannesburg.
On the horizon are plans to expand into Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe before rolling out to the rest of the SADC region. Not bad at all for an idea that started on campus, selling t-shirts to fellow students.
For the foreseeable future, Nkwete sees his company confining its growth to the SADC region. His strategy is informed by two things that define the region: economic stability and vibrancy.
The region, he notes, has a lot of wealth ÔÇô and for a company like Mafia Soul this presents immense potential whose surface he has not even begun to scratch.
“South Africa is Africa’s largest economy, and Botswana is the world’s largest supplier of diamonds. Gauteng’s GDP is bigger than Nigeria’s,” he says of the neighbouring country’s biggest province. “The advantage is that we are just next to South Africa.”
The proximity to the regional economic giant and the country’s long trade relationship with Botswana were the factors that led Nkwete to expand into South Africa in 2010 with a store in Milpark. (He is currently planning to relocate the store to a new location where it will get the right exposure for his target market).
“We decided to go into South Africa because we wanted to grow the brand,” he explains. “We looked at the size of the South African economy and we saw an opportunity to play in that market. We consume a lot of products from South Africa, so why not go there to do business?”
The seeds of Mafia Soul were planted when Nkwete was an electrical engineering student at the University of Botswana, and he literally sold t-shirts in the capital’s streets and on campus. To finance the business, he used his student allowance.
“I didn’t start big,” he recalls. “I started selling one t-shirt till I could buy 100 t-shirts. Whatever I made was reinvested into the business.”
For the first five years, he decided not to recoup anything from the business. “I never got any funding from anyone; I had to make do with what I had. I used to stay in a 1-bedroom house paying rent of P300. In a month I would spend P1 000 on myself to pay for accommodation, transport, and food. Most of the time I just worked for the company, putting its interest ahead of mine.”
The business idea was inspired by the Hip Hop lifestyle which Nkwete had followed from a very young age. He realised that no-one catered for that particular lifestyle in Botswana, and he decided to fill the gap.
After earning the engineering degree, he graduated to selling on the streets fulltime before opening the first Mafia Soul store in Gaborone’s Main Mall, which was later followed by another one in the African Mall. These were closed when the company got space to move into the high-end malls ÔÇô Riverwalk in 2008 and Game City in 2010.
The first two stores taught him that in retail business, you have to be on the right spot. For instance, the store at the Main Mall was upstairs in a building that did not have much traffic, while African Mall was not the right place to reach the target market.
He has decided to give Hip Hop a local feel by establishing a home brand that celebrates Botswana’s urban youth culture. The brand Rep Gabz was inspired by the American label Streetwise, whose owners Nkwete met on one of his business trips to the United States.
Impressed that he was stocking their brand, they suggested that in future he could have his own line. He conceptualised the brand, but allowed a local designer to work on its look and feel.
He is happy with the response to the Rep Gabz brand, which is the casual clothing of choice for a lot of local celebrities.
“Whatever I have done, I feel a lot of people have supported us; from young people to the media, except where we needed finance. Most institutions didn’t listen to us,” he says.
Though he is not keen to publicly disclose his numbers, the turnover is good, and he is confident that there is potential to raise it. It is a different story from the early days when he would sometimes lose money as quickly as he had made it.
“I spent the first five years learning business because when I started I didn’t quite have the vision of where it was heading,” he reflects. “I was just selling and getting things to support myself. As time went on, I realised that this thing could be big. I realised the potential to build the business into something valuable. In that time I lost money; a lot of money. But I never focused on the loss because I viewed it as an investment, and I was learning something out of it.”
He talks of the many moments when he thought of giving up.
“Sometimes I would be in the States (to buy merchandise) and it would be snowing heavily and I’m thinking, ‘when I get back home I don’t want to do this anymore’,” he recalls.
One common thing experienced by all trailblazers is the difficulty of convincing skeptics, especially when one is young and they have big ambitions. For Nkwete, one such hurdle was persuading landlords that his company was a worthy tenant that deserved as good space as any other established brand. Having proven that he runs a professional outfit that does not default on its obligations, he is confident that those who come after him will find better reception.
As he contemplates growing his business into the rest of the southern African sub-region, Nkwete has questions about government’s commitment to empowerment of citizen entrepreneurs.
“We don’t understand the empowerment concept in this country,” he says. “When General Electric or Microsoft wants to make a deal in another country they don’t just send the CEO. The American secretary of commerce goes there to open doors for American companies. Here, it’s a man for himself. If people in government knew of an opportunity in Namibia, do you think they would even tell me? Sometimes you may have money and the right idea, but need someone to open the right doors at the right political level.
We have to relook at empowerment. There is a disconnect between government and entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs. It took us 10 years to arrive where we are. It wasn’t supposed to take 10 years. If I had the right support, I would probably be sitting at 100 stores. And I’m not asking to be spoon-fed.”
He holds that the biggest challenge to being the CEO of his own company is that as well as innovating and initiating ideas, he is also the driver that has to ensure that the dreams are achieved.
“I have to make the right decisions all the time,” he says. “I have people who depend on me, and that means my responsibilities are huge. Sometimes I wonder how the CEO of Choppies thinks; he runs 53 stores and still plans to open more.”
Having known no other employer except Mafia Soul, Nkwete, who turns 32 in May, reveals that for the past 12 years he has been coming to work every day. He takes a break to rest when he feels the need, but maintains that as the captain of the ship he has to put in more hours than everyone else.
“I make sure that each day I do something towards achieving my goal, but I make sure that I create time for those I need to see,” he says. “Sometimes I wonder when this (seven-day working week) is going to come to an end. Maybe when I have achieved certain things. Maybe the more you achieve the more you are driven to want to achieve more.”
