There is little chance Basani Magadzi will forget the smell of squalor and poverty that characterized her childhood in rural Giyani in South Africa’s Limpopo province.
Yet the air of her humble home was always redolent with the sweet scent of the citrus and lavender of her mother’s favorite fragrance, so reminiscent of childhood for Magadzi even now.
She didn’t know then she would one day take her olfactory obsession and turn it into profit.
Magadzi is the founder and owner of Baneli Perfumes in Johannesburg, far away from her village. Today, she talks about names like Richard Branson and Steve Jobs (her role models), Coco Chanel and Jo Malone (the brands she wants to compete with).
The road from Giyani to Johannesburg, from penury to perfumery, was a challenging one.
She had displayed a talent for entrepreneurship early, buying and selling sweets, which she called Funny Faces, while still in primary school. Her precociousness saw her taking on a degree in commerce specializing in banking at the University of South Africa. She then went on to work at Nedbank in Braampark, Johannesburg.
It was only a matter of time – three years – before she gave up a stable job with a regular income for the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.
“I knew I had it in me to go into business,” says Magadzi, 30 now.
She swapped calculators for the flacon (ornamental perfume bottle). Three years on, she believes she made the right choice.
“What’s the point of staying in a place when you know you are unhappy?” she says of her short-lived banking career.
Dipping into her R40,000 ($2,471) savings, slowly but surely, she developed her perfume business cultivating a network of suppliers and establishing a good rapport with them, whilst also getting trained and learning from them.
“I am still young and do not have much responsibility. I realized it was the right time to take the risk and venture into my passion.”
With hard work, she took her business from an informal enterprise to a large-scale manufacturer and supplier of perfumes. She makes 5,000 50ml bottles a month.
Magadzi launched Baneli Perfumes in 2013 in the backroom of a church. Her business has since grown to include orders from Namibia, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Opportunities came in the least likely places.
“When I visited the DRC, I bumped into a woman who operates a number of businesses. She smelled a perfume I was wearing and asked where I had bought [it from]. I told her I made the perfume and she said she would want to order [them] from me,” she says.
Magadzi says selling perfumes is more than a business for her, it’s her life.
“If someone takes this from me I would be finished. I have turned down investors with big pay checks as I want autonomy.”
She says she also has another objective – job creation.
“I also see this business as a vehicle for empowering people. If I open shops, I fear this will take agents out of business. I feel like it’s part of my calling to empower people.”
Magadzi considers herself a protégé of leading business icons.
“I like reading articles and books by Richard Branson and the late Steve Jobs. I am positive that with the knowledge I am gaining, by 2035, Baneli Perfumes will be a household perfume [for] 90 per cent of Africans.”
She also has big plans for the short-term.
“By December 2017, the business will be valued beyond one million rand as I intend to migrate from manual production into a highly-mechanized platform.”
Whatever she does, she says she will never be a salaried employee again because she believes the workplace limits creativity.
She is also now focused on broadening her understanding of perfumes.
“I have always loved perfumes because it stays in one’s memory forever,” says Magadzi. Just like the citrus and lavender of her mother’s scents that set off all the right notes of success.