A Luxury Brand that is Proudly African With a Global Footprint.

Words By Kojo Baffoe

Talking to Laduma Ngxokolo, the first thing that pops into my mind is Steve Jobs’ words, namely, "You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

He is sitting in his car, somewhere in Joburg’s inner city, having stopped to chat via video call. Even amidst a global pandemic that has changed the way we live, the way we work and the way we create, this is very much a normal workday, which starts at 09:00 am and ends at midnight. He describes a day in his life, “a bit of driving into dingy places around town looking for and visiting suppliers, getting raw material, and doing research. Most of my days also involve running around the factory and having meetings with my staff.”

Maxhosa now has over 65 employees, all with urgent departmental matters that they want addressed. I try to spend more time with the design team because we are more of a design-focused company.”

Image Credit: Twitter.com/@MaXhosaAfrica

The Birth of Maxhosa

Laduma, while still early in his journey, has already come a long way from Port Elizabeth - now Gqeberha - and the Nelson Mandela University where the idea for Maxhosa was born while he was studying towards a BTech. Growing up in a home where fashion and textile design was the norm, he was struck by how the wardrobe for Xhosa initiates coming home was based on foreign brands and, therefore, not culturally relevant. Tapping into what surrounded him, in terms of the aesthetic that makes AmaXhosa different, beadwork stood out and that is where he drew his inspiration from.

The vision was to create a luxury brand that reflected his people, that confronted and contributed to the challenge of job scarcity, particularly within the textile and clothing industry, and became a reference point or benchmark for Africans, in the diaspora and at home. Laduma has maintained that vision and been deliberate about the dots, even if connecting them is something that is done with hindsight, even when there weren’t many examples of luxury African brands when he launched.

He says, “Curio brands were popular in the beginning stages of Maxhosa. In those days, when you mentioned something African, customers would think that by default, you are trying to venture into the curio market. I have worked to be consistent in our messaging and our positioning, explaining to our customers that we are building a luxury brand that is proudly African with a global footprint.”

Branching Out

Another way that Laduma has done this is through both the expansion of product lines and collaborations with other luxury brands, which has included everything from designing packaging for Chivas Regal to working on chocolates and packaging with Magnum.

“I won’t lie, I didn’t anticipate how we would diversify. I thought we’d only do high fashion, focused on menswear but, over the years, I realised that we have unique DNA that can be interpreted into various other products. The big jump happened when I started getting demand from women who felt our flamboyant, colourful aesthetic for womenswear, which I launched in 2014. For those who were limited by the pricing of our clothing, I started socks, and later ready-to-wear, as an entry point into the brand.”

For the higher end of Maxhosa’s customer community, Laduma realised that there was a market for more bespoke, one-of-one pieces and, as a result, expanded into the rugs, throws, wallpaper and the like. As a distinctive brand based on culture with a bold and recognisable DNA, there are no limits to the spaces that Maxhosa can play in, whether it is clothing, homeware or beachwear.

And, while he has done 99% of the design work, in the last six months, he has been developing a design team of young fresh minds who are learning how to create design ideas that fit into the ethos of the brand. A team that has learnt that, for the sake of that ethos, products are built to last.

He says, “we don't instantly think about an idea and the next morning we do it. We prototype it and test it for a while to make sure the specs are up to scratch and satisfy the value that customers expect. Once we are 100% confident, we go to market.”

Nomzamo MbathaImage Credit: Twitter.com/MaXhosaAfrica — Nomzamo Mbatha
Image Credit: Twitter.com/MaXhosaAfrica

This is tied to how Laduma defines luxury which is “something that is extraordinary, that is well thought through and well designed. It is something that is made with foresight, that is made to last and that makes the consumer feel special.”

He goes on to say, “The word ‘exclusive’ is overplayed because it is divorced from the reality that we live in. For example, what is exclusive to Louis Vuitton, may not be exclusive to me. We live in a connected world. If they release 1000 units of one piece and, because I have a smaller reach, release 10 or 20 pieces, we can both call our products ‘exclusive’. At the end of the day, we sell things to satisfy the customer. If the customer feels exclusive in it, it fits into my definition of luxury.”

Maxhosa, the Brand

Clarity of vision and an intimate understanding of who Maxhosa is as a brand is critical. In Laduma’s words, “At the heart of the strategy and approach is innovation and precision. We must carve spaces and walk roads that are less travelled. We must make a mark. Maxhosa is an innovative brand. It is a brand that is bold, that is friendly, that is humble, it is a brand that is an advocate of culture and, therefore, whichever we touch, those characteristics have to show. It has to be explicit, and it has to be instant regardless of what we do, whether it's a marketing strategy, a goodwill campaign, a show or our sales strategy. I believe that customers buy association, not just products, and buy into the personality and the team behind the brand.”

This also carries over into who stocks Maxhosa and when and where to open flagship shops. While they receive numerous requests from across the world, the two non-negotiables are the shop fittings in any boutique that wants to carry Maxhosa and how customers are treated in the shop, which Laduma does extensive research on, before agreeing. At the same time, there are minimum order quantities to ensure that stores aren’t stocking limited quantities of a few items, which can impact customers’ perceptions of the brand.

In terms of which territories to add flagship stores, it is driven by demand. Laduma explains, “In Cape Town, we had an established clientele who purchased from a retailer there, but we were increasingly getting complaints that they don’t have the levels of inventory that we have in Joburg. We decided it was time to open a flagship store there, as a result.”

He adds, “We are now getting the same demand from customers in New York as well as in countries across the continent. We are doing research, building relationships and waiting for the right time. We don't want to open up a store and then close it after a couple of years. We want to be there forever.”

COVID-19, The Elephant in the Room

As we all have, globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced Laduma to revisit elements of the Maxhosa strategy, particularly the online strategy, both from a human resource and from a marketing and retail perspective. With the team working from home more, the management of human resources has had to switch to an app. Performance is monitored in this way, including reporting, to-do lists and targets.

They have also had to put more attention into the online store and with digital platforms, including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. “We have had to become better at selling people content. When factories and stores closed, the only thing that we could sell was that we were capable of making this type of jersey in this style. You pay us and we’ll deliver to you within a month. Imagine sitting in a position where people have paid you a lot of money but all you have been selling them are images because you don’t have stock.”

The third element to this revised strategy was solidifying business-to-business partnerships especially at a time when so much is happening in the world, beyond COVID-19. As a cultural brand, Maxhosa is vested in movements such as Black Lives Matter, the spike in overt racism and the needs of small Black business. Partnering with like-minded businesses has become even more imperative, for Laduma, in this moment in history.

No One Is an Island

It is that understanding of a brand as a part of something larger than simply making profits that prompted Laduma, with two close friends – artist Nelson Makamo and DJ Black Coffee – to start F.A.M Academy. He says of the two, “We exchange ideas. We exchange business relationships. If I am wondering how to approach a certain request of collaboration, I can call Nelson or Black Coffee or their teams for advice. We also bought a building where we house our studios. It made better business sense to be settling a mortgage instead of paying rent for the next ten years on a property we won’t own.”

Laduma also has relationships in various parts of the world, people and brands that have a commonality of spirit and purpose; they help each other out in whatever way possible whether it is suppliers, access to markets or warehousing.

With all the things that Laduma has to keep a handle on, I wonder how he can constantly stay inspired personally and as a designer. His response is, “I am forced to, in a way, refresh myself every 6 months. In this industry, there is the expectation that we have a new collection every season. I try to research the latest trends. I explore the world of beadwork, including exploring anthropological references from other cultures, primarily from across the continent. I also try to get out of my comfort zone by going out, interacting with customers socially and looking at Maxhosa from the outside in. Every time I connect with customers, I get insights into what it is that works and doesn’t work. Fortunately, 99% of the time, it is good things.”

This unwillingness to rest on his laurels is also driving Laduma’s plans for Maxhosa in the next decade. This entails fully submerging the brand in the lifestyle space in a way that is unpredictable yet always true to it, whether it is swimming pool tiles, bathroom tiles and wallpaper to hotel and luxury yacht interiors. And, it is subtle, but in the last year or so, the brand went from being Maxhosa by Laduma to, simply, Maxhosa Africa.

For Laduma, “the brand must take precedence. My job is to go from entrepreneur to businessman; that is what will take the business to the next level. I have learned that a human being is not an everlasting asset of the business, the brand is. If I die today, the brand must live on. It is about being less emotional but still sentimental about the brand”.

There is no doubt that Laduma is building a brand with a solid foundation which goes a long way in ensuring longevity. Maxhosa is an African luxury brand that is redefining how we view luxury from our perspective, as Africans.