They began selling skirts out of the boot of their VW Beetle car in 2000 to friends and family. Sixteen years later, their clothes have been worn at the best fashion shows in Atlanta, Washington, Nigeria, London and India.
It didn’t come easy.
On a balmy Saturday morning, we arrive at the Sun Goddess boutique in Sandton City, a plush mall in Johannesburg, South Africa. What hits you in the face is a bunch of Afro-centric ethnic wear on the racks, a pride and fortune of husband and wife team, Thando and Vanya Mangaliso.
Behind the counter is Vanya; fashion design is her forte. This poised award-winning designer has a petite physique and a headwrap; she has a soft handshake and a striking smile.
Her husband and business partner, Thando, concentrates on retail.
Vanya, 43, was the only child at home, always surrounded by cousins, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. She had a passion for reading.
“I grew up in a family of dreamers; grateful for the love of books instilled in me and I guess that continues to fuel my dreams.
“The endless beauty in life, love, family, books, history, the future and our rich heritage. I’m also inspired by the idea of believing there is more and I tend to enjoy the sacrament of work; the desire to rise above mediocrity,” says Vanya.
She worked in the corporate world, in Logistics for Transnet, traveling to different countries: Zambia, Congo and Nigeria, where she noticed that fashion dictated their culture.
“When I’d get off the aeroplane in Nigeria, I’d know I’m in Nigeria, because of their traditional wear. But in South Africa, it was not always the case because fashion didn’t exist as we know it today. It wasn’t always like this. It took a collective effort of community that was transitioning,” says Vanya.
It was those trips that encouraged her to start her own business in fashion.
Vanya’s biggest inspiration is her mother, who always wore Umbaco, a traditional outfit.
She always wondered why people didn’t wear [traditional regalia] regularly. It’s no surprise that she created a business out of this.
“We had to define what the South African aesthetic is. It is not merely taking a normal western t-shirt and put buttons, I mean at the end of the day you have to define the DNA of the South African look.”
Even a good novelist couldn’t have written her story.
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The Mangalisos had five stores in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Managing all shops wasn’t easy. In 2009, they closed three.
“We didn’t have a system that allowed us to manage a shop that was in Durban when we were in Johannesburg so we had to restructure our business. And we opted for the quality of the profit margin as opposed to the quantity,” says Vanya.
They had 150 employees in retail and production but today they have only 20 employees.
The Mangalisos also faced a major setback in their career when their stock of fragrances worth
R2 million ($150,000) got wiped out in one day as a result of a flood at their Rosebank store – a terrible moment.
“I tend not to take things personally at all. It was also a very special and interesting time, making great use of the antagonistic nature of things to rise to greater heights as people,” she says.
In addition to the bad luck she suffered because of nature, there was also an armed robbery at her home in Atholl in Johannesburg, in the middle of the night.
“As it happens you ask yourself how this story is going to end! So helpless, so vulnerable, terrified and sure they clean you out. You can only try to keep calm and be grateful for your lives,” says Vanya.
“I live in the now, fully aware [of living] every moment to the fullest; I tend not to dwell on the dead past or fear the future. I’m also a great believer in letting go of pain once it has served you and so I’m an eternal optimist always looking ahead,” she says.
Even though the Mangalisos struggled with their business, they still believe a loan should be earned.
“When we started the business, we never got a business loan. Having things easy deprives you of being enterprising because as they say necessity is the mother of invention and I think my life is a testament to that,” says Vanya.
Even at their worst time in business, they were creating products to make money. They launched a range of African head gear.
“We’ve become very cut-throat, the business must make money; if it doesn’t make money, we close it. It’s not about your pride; even a fashion line, if it doesn’t make money, we close it. We’ve driven costs down and continued to make sort of the same money,” says Thando.
“With us, it’s all or nothing. If I don’t sell a skirt I don’t eat,” says Vanya.

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‘If I don’t Sell A Skirt I Don’t Eat

She remembers it like it was yesterday.
A shy 11-year-old girl in a red blouse and black skirt on the Turkish border “in sticky weather” looking wistfully into the distance, clinging to her family’s two suitcases and memories of Bulgaria.
Unknown to her then, as she crossed the border from Bulgaria to Turkey with her parents and brother, she also left behind her childhood, one filled with happy days, endless laughter, horses, fig and pomegranate trees and the love of doting grandparents. Things would never be the same again.
In the suitcases were the family’s only belongings, mostly warm clothes, whatever they could hastily gather before making the long trip, as one of 360,000 ethnic refugees who had to leave Bulgaria for Turkey in the summer of 1989.
“My childhood ended, there and then, in the middle of that,” says Neri Karra, who is 37 now, and owns an eponymous line of luxury leather handbags. She retails in 26 stores across 14 countries, her most recent addition being the Neri Karra boutique in Melrose Arch, a swanky shopping and residential district in Johannesburg.
But it’s that indelible scene on the border that the London-based designer goes back to for inspiration, every day.
Penniless, hungry and homeless, the family stayed in an immigrant camp for a month living off refugee fare.
“They gave us grapes one day, I remember, it was like they were handing out jewelry,” recalls Karra.
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“The moment we stepped foot in Istanbul, my father cried with joy. We were emotional, chaotic, nervous, excited, all at the same time.”
Thereafter, Karra was enrolled into a “ghetto school” in Istanbul with 85 students and no teachers on some days, sharing a desk with three others.
Her father worked as a welder and her mother as a cleaner in a factory. There were days when the family went to bed hungry.
“I was grateful my parents could get me notebooks and pencils for school. I was grateful for the littlest thing. My only objective was to study hard and change my family’s circumstances.”
She was consistently top of her class, and after college, received financial aid to study in the United States (US), leaving from Istanbul to Miami with one suitcase at the age of 18, and graduating university with three gold medals.
“No one in my family had gone to university before me. They didn’t speak English,” says Karra, who speaks five languages.
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Sitting On A Fig Tree
She appreciated the entrepreneurial spirit of the people she met in the US, and decided she should start her own business back home. As a child, she had loved fashion. Afternoons were spent sitting on the branches of a fig tree in her home in southern Bulgaria, leafing through the pages of German fashion magazines.
“Living in communism in Bulgaria, you didn’t have nice things, so I wanted to make beautiful objects,” she says. Her grandfather crafted saddles for the horses. That was Karra’s first tryst with leather.
“All the dots in life connect at some point. My life has always been this way. The trick is to stay connected, to what makes you come alive, and I call that love. The love you have for what you do.”
Karra was only 22 when she embarked on her first entrepreneurial venture, and set up her first showroom at Asenovgrad in her hometown in Bulgaria. Today, she returns to the town every two months, evisiting fond memories.
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Celebrity Clients
Karra works with Italian leather to make wallets, handbags, clutches, purses and accessories, for men and women. She also makes them with faux animal skin prints. She owns a design studio outside of Florence. Her parents are also keenly involved in the business, running her art factory in Istanbul. Her biggest market is Russia. What next? She is closely eyeing the Middle East for new stores and has a proposed expansion plan in the US. She has gifted her handbags to Hollywood star Anne Hathaway, and counts among her clients supermodel Elle Macpherson who she says has bought from her.
Karra is constantly shuttling between Istanbul and London, a city she loves, overseeing a business that has a sales turnover of $12 million. She has a PhD in Management, has published two academic books and often teaches at universities in London.
Needless to say, she has a busy unstoppable career. Is that why she is still single? Karra says she is not averse to marriage.
“I haven’t met the right man yet. I will get married for love,” she says. Karra has a quiet determination about her.
A soft-spoken but confident and hard-hitting businesswoman, yet, it’s her 11-year-old self on the Turkish border that she constantly looks up to. “When I stood on that border, I had a vision. It motivated me to create a better future for my family. It changed my life.” And she would not change a thing about it.

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‘If I don’t Sell A Skirt I Don’t Eat

The Girl On The Border