PARIS — Can Asantii become the first African fashion label to compete with the likes of Sandro, APC and Ba&sh?
Rwanda-born entrepreneur Maryse Mbonyumutwa believes the world is ready for what she sees as Africa’s first global brand as she prepares to launch the contemporary, designed-and-made-in-Africa label that she hopes will serve as an incubator. for the local fashion industry. .
The chief executive of Pink Mango, a multinational group with 23 years of experience in clothing and promotional items, Mbonyumutwa has worked extensively with factories in Asia but was frustrated that the clothing industry was not creating more jobs on the African continent. .
Likewise, she was puzzled that such a large territory had not yet established a brand for a worldwide audience. “I’ve worked for so many brands from so many different countries — France, the UK, Germany, the Americans, even the Japanese have Uniqlo — but I’ve never had a technical package for a global African brand,” she told WWD. . .
“It’s a continent of 1.2 billion people who don’t run around naked in Africa, so who dresses them? “I thought there was a little imbalance,” she said.
The executive, who fled the Rwandan genocide at the age of 20 and now holds dual Belgian citizenship, is bringing her international expertise to the venture and in 2019 teamed up with her historic Chinese partner to set up a factory in Rwanda that has created 4,300 jobs so far. .
The facility produces outerwear for firms including G-III Apparel Group; Spanish retailer Tendam; France’s Damartex Group; and supermarket chains such as Tesco, Lidl and Aldi. It will serve as the springboard for the launch of Asantii, a womenswear brand that celebrates African heritage and craftsmanship.
“We are definitely not a fast fashion brand,” said Mbonyumutwa. “We are a sustainable and ethical brand, and our positioning is more in what they call affordable luxury. But in terms of price, we are cheaper because we want the brand to be affordable in the continent as well.”
Maryse Mbonyumuta
Courtesy of Asante
The first collection celebrates Rwanda’s natural landscape with a palette of apricot, indigo and forest green. The graphic prints and embroideries reference an Adinkra symbol from Ghana that represents the “all-seeing eye,” as well as the Ashanti fertility doll. Materials include the traditional Faso Dan Fani cotton fabric from Burkina Faso.
The label’s website opened for pre-orders on Thursday and will officially open on August 3, along with a pop-up shop in Ham Yard Village in London’s Soho district. A second temporary space will open on August 15 in Kigali at interior design store Ysaro, to be followed by a boutique in Johannesburg in September.
The Asantii collection, named after the Swahili word for “thank you”, is the product of a group of 15 designers from Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
This geographical diversity reflects the vast amount of talent waiting to be tapped on the continent. Luxury brands have woken up to this potential, with AZ Factory selecting South Africa’s Thebe Magugu as its first guest designer, and the Karl Lagerfeld brand teaming up with Nigerian designer Kenneth Ize on a capsule collection.
Investors are also sensing the opportunity. Birimian, an investment firm focused on African designers, said in April it was growing its platform by partnering with Paris-based private equity firm Trail Capital to launch a long-term investment firm aimed at fostering the first generation of global luxury brands on the continent. .
“Initially, what I was thinking is to invest in an African brand, and then see how we can produce for it and see if we can scale and globalize it. But I’ve been in contact with quite a few brands in Africa and I’d say most have one problem: they all have amazing creativity, but then the problem really comes down to execution,” said Mbonyumutwa.
“The quality isn’t good, there’s no standardization and they don’t have access to the manufacturing infrastructure, so it’s very difficult to scale when you’re in those conditions,” the executive said.
“So the dilemma was, what do I do? I really want to support African fashion but I don’t want to support mediocrity because when you buy something, you will wear it once but you will not become a returning customer,” she continued. “It was like, let’s create our brand and go through what they go through, and then we’ll be able to actually identify what we’re missing on the continent to showcase some brands.”
To begin with, Pink Mango did a rating for each of the 14 labels on its list.
They are Soraya’s Devotion; Clothing by Laëtitia Kandolo; Richie Maya; Yefikir Design by Fikirte Addis; Chloe Asaam; Pelebe by Zak Cone; Romeo by Iona McCreath; Amal Belcaid; Emmy’s Wife by Emmanuel Okoro; Tony Grace; Sisters of Africa by Helen Daba; Error by Natasha Jaume and Carina Louw; Anjali Borkhataria – The best of Martin Kadinda.
A look at Asantii’s debut collection.
Courtesy of Asante
Many of them have won awards and have strong local followings, but tend to produce their clothing by hand in traditional workshops without the know-how to deal with garment factories, Mbonyumutwa said.
“There’s quite a large group that actually lacks just basic fashion education, so we’re hoping to partner with fashion schools internationally,” she said.
“Between the designer’s creativity, what it’s drawn on paper and the clothes you wear, there are many other professions that are simply not available on the mainland,” she said, adding that many designers in her group were unaware . of the various technical professions that exist in the industry.
Asantii is helping designers with a manufacturing infrastructure and the support of a team in London drawn from the luxury industry. “As they co-create for Asantii, they are learning the skills and we will open up the entire Asantii infrastructure to brands when they are ready,” said Mbonyumutwa.
“My dream is to develop the 14 brands to the level they want, because not everyone wants to scale. Some of them want to remain smaller brands, but they still need support for execution and product quality,” she added.
The London team is led by Vanessa Anglin, former vice president of product development at Burberry, while the design studio is overseen by Anna Schmidt Risak, who has designed for brands such as Burberry, Bally and Alberta Ferretti.
Asantii plans to develop two seasonless collections per year. By the end of next year, the company plans to introduce the work of four designers under its own label to be sold alongside its online brand. As of next year, the label’s headquarters will officially move to Kigali.
“Today, we are exporting 85 percent of our production, so I really hope that in 10 years when you work in our group of factories, we will be producing 50 percent for Western brands, but 50 percent for African brands,” Mbonyumutwa said.
“Once we own the project in Rwanda, the aim is to replicate the Asantii infrastructure – product development and manufacturing – in other countries,” added the executive, who hopes to open units in West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa.
A look at Asantii’s debut collection.
Courtesy of Asante.
She noted that although there is some textile production on the African continent, mainly in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the factories were run by foreign companies that tried to reproduce the conditions in their local factories. Mbonyumutwa ran errands in Ethiopia for two years, but soon realized he wanted to do things differently.
“There was also a lot of social unrest and strikes, and coming from Africa, I could see where that was coming from. And when I was discussing with my suppliers who had Chinese management up to the top in human resource management, I realized that they completely undermined the importance of cultural integration, which is crazy to me in a labor-intensive industry,” she said.
Mbonyumutwa decided to start over in Rwanda and a year later launched the Pink Ubuntu program, which works towards achieving six of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Workers get one free meal a day and have access to a free daycare for their children. A factory outlet sells basic groceries at wholesale prices and employees receive sanitary pads every month.
“We have two nurses that we would like to upgrade to a proper clinic,” said Mbonyumutwa. “We hope to do this with the first proceeds that Asantii will inject into the program.”
Labor in Africa remains expensive, she said. Asantii sources cotton from Egypt and Madagascar, denim from Morocco and other fabrics from Burkina Faso and Kenya. While there are no tariffs on exports to the EU and the UK, the African Continental Free Trade Area, which came into force last year, gives members up to 13 years to eliminate tariffs on goods and services.
“We really hope it will be a reality and they can speed up because it’s hard to do business within Africa right now,” she said. Right now, Asantii is sacrificing some of its margins to offset import duties in other African countries.
“Our ambition is to see Asantii open in cities where designers come from in Africa, and hopefully in the West as well. After London, we hope to be in Paris, and why not in the USA?” said Mbonyumutwa.
“Our ambition is to go global, not necessarily scale massively in terms of volume, but in terms of visibility. We want to share all this wealth of creativity that we have in Africa,” she said.
