Asantii hopes to become the world’s first African global fashion brand

PARIS — Could Asantii become the first African fashion brand to compete with Sandro, APC and Ba&sh?

Rwandan-born entrepreneur Maryse Mbonyumutwa believes the world is ready for what she heralds as Africa’s first global brand, as she prepares to launch the contemporary brand, designed and produced in Africa, which she hopes will serve as an incubator for the fashion industry. local. .

The CEO of Pink Mango, a multinational group with 23 years of experience in garment manufacturing and the production of promotional items, Mbonyumutwa has worked extensively with factories in Asia, but was frustrated that the garment industry was not creating more jobs on the African continent.

Similarly, she was puzzled that such a large territory had yet to produce a brand for a worldwide audience. “I have worked for so many brands from so many different countries (France, UK, Germany, the Americans, even the Japanese have Uniqlo), but I have never had a technical package on hand for a global African brand,” she told WWD. .

“It’s a continent of 1.2 billion people who don’t run naked in Africa, so who dresses them? I thought there was a bit of an imbalance,” she said.

The executive, who fled the Rwandan genocide at age 20 and now holds dual Belgian citizenship, is bringing her international experience to the company, and in 2019 partnered with her long-standing Chinese partner to set up a factory in Rwanda that has created 4,300 jobs. of work so far. .

The facility produces outerwear for firms such as G-III Apparel Group; Spanish retailer Tendam; the Damartex Group of France; and supermarket chains such as Tesco, Lidl and Aldi. It will serve as a springboard for the launch of Asantii, a womenswear brand that celebrates African heritage and craftsmanship.

“We are definitely not a fast fashion brand,” Mbonyumutwa said. “We are a sustainable and ethical brand, and our positioning is more in what they call affordable luxury. But in terms of prices, we are cheaper because we want the brand to be affordable on the mainland as well.”

Maryse Mbonyumutwa.

Maryse Mbonyumutwa

Courtesy of Asantii

The first collection celebrates the natural landscape of Rwanda with a palette of apricot, indigo and forest green. Graphic prints and embroidery reference a Ghanaian Adinkra symbol representing the “all-seeing eye” as well as the Ashanti fertility doll. Materials include traditional Burkina Faso Dan Fani cotton fabric.

The label’s website opened for pre-orders on Thursday and will officially launch on August 3, alongside a pop-up store in Ham Yard Village in London’s Soho district. A second temporary space will open on August 15 in Kigali at the Ysaro interior design store, followed by a boutique in Johannesburg in September.

Named after the Swahili word for “thank you,” the Asantii collection is the product of a group of 15 designers from Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda , Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.

That geographic diversity reflects the sheer amount of talent waiting to be tapped on the continent. Luxury brands have realized this potential: AZ Factory chose South Africa’s Thebe Magugu as its first guest designer, and the Karl Lagerfeld brand partnered with Nigerian designer Kenneth Ize on a capsule collection.

Investors are also sensing the opportunity. Birimian, an investment firm focused on African fashion designers, said in April that it was expanding 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 from the continent. .

“Originally what I was thinking about is investing in an African brand and then seeing how we can produce for it and see if we can scale it and globalize it. But I have been in contact with quite a few brands in Africa, and I would say that most of them have a problem: they all have incredible creativity, but the problem really comes in terms of execution,” said Mbonyumutwa.

“The quality is not good, there is no standardization and they do not have access to the production infrastructure, so it is very difficult to scale when you are in these conditions,” said the executive.

“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’re going to wear it once, but you won’t become a repeat customer,” she continued. “It was like, let’s set our own brand and look at what they’re going through, and then we can really identify what we’re missing on the continent for some brands to emerge.”

To start with, Pink Mango did an evaluation of each of the 14 labels on its list.

They are Soraya da Piedade; Uchawi by Laëtitia Kandolo; Mayan Richie; Yefikir Design by Fikirte Addis; Chloe Asaam; Zak Koné’s mantle; Iona McCreath’s Kiko Romeo; Amal Belcaid; Emmanuel Okoro’s Emmy Kasbit; Tony Grace; Sisters of Afrika by Hélène Daba; Erre by Natasha Jaume and Carina Louw; Ekantik by Anjali Borkhataria and Martin Kadinda.

A look from Asantii's debut collection.

A look from Asantii’s debut collection.

Courtesy of Asantii

Many of them have won awards and have a large local following, but they tend to produce their clothes by hand in traditional workshops and lack the skills to deal with garment factories, Mbonyumutwa said.

“There is a fairly large group that actually lacks just basic fashion education, so we hope to partner with fashion schools internationally,” he said.

“Between the designer’s creativity, what he draws on paper and the clothes he wears, there are so many other professions that are simply not available on the continent,” he said, adding that many designers in his group were unaware of the various technical professions. that exist in the industry.

Asantii is helping the designers with a production 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 climb. Some of them want to remain smaller brands, but they still need the support for execution and product quality,” he added.

The London team is headed by Vanessa Anglin, Burberry’s former vice president of product development, while the design studio is overseen by Anna Schmidt Risak, who has designed for brands including Burberry, Bally and Alberta Ferretti.

Asantii plans to develop two non-seasonal collections per year. By the end of next year, the company plans to feature the work of four designers under its own label to sell alongside its brand online. Starting next year, the label’s headquarters will officially move to Kigali.

“Today, we export 85% of our production, so I really hope that in 10 years, when you work in our set of factories, we will be producing 50% for Western brands, but 50% for African brands,” Mbonyumutwa. she said.

“Once we have mastered the project in Rwanda, the goal is to replicate Asantii’s infrastructure (product development and production) in other countries,” added the executive, who hopes to open units in West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa.

A look from Asantii's debut collection.

A look from Asantii’s debut collection.

Courtesy of Asantii.

He noted that although there is some textile manufacturing on the African continent, mainly in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the factories were run by foreign companies that tended to replicate the conditions in their domestic plants. Mbonyumutwa placed orders in Ethiopia for two years, but quickly realized that he wanted to do things differently.

“There was also quite a bit of social unrest and strikes, and I, coming from Africa, could really see where that was coming from. And when I was arguing with my suppliers who had Chinese management 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 hand-intensive industry. of work,” he said.

Mbonyumutwa decided to start from scratch in Rwanda and a year later launched the Pink Ubuntu program, which works to achieve six of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Workers receive one free meal a day and have access to free daycare for their children. A factory store sells basic groceries at wholesale prices, and employees receive sanitary pads every month.

“We have two infirmaries that we would love to turn into a proper clinic,” Mbonyumutwa said. “We hope to do that with the first revenue that Asantii will inject into the show.”

Working in Africa is still expensive, he 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 effect last year, gives members up to 13 years to remove tariffs on goods and services.

“We really hope that it will be a reality and that they can accelerate, because now it is difficult to do business within Africa,” he said. For now, Asantii is sacrificing some of its margins to offset import tariffs in other African countries.

“Our ambition is to see Asantii open up in cities across Africa where designers come from and hopefully in the West as well. After London, we hope to also be in Paris, and why not in the United States? Mbonyumutwa said.

“Our ambition is to be global, not necessarily to 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.

Source: wwd.com