| Positive outlook enables way out of crisis for restaurant group | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/positive-outlook-enables-way-out-of-crisis-for-restaurant-group | Positive outlook enables way out of crisis for restaurant group | The Covid-19 lockdown started as a double blow for Reshan Myasur and his group of franchise outlets. Not only did it wipe out weeks of turnover of his family’s Steers, Fishaways, Milky Lane and Debonairs franchise outlets in Johannesburg, but it started at the worst possible time of the month. | 2020/09/15 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Top guest house carefully weathering the storm | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/top-guest-house-carefully-weathering-the-storm | Top guest house carefully weathering the storm | The pandemic, which has hit the tourism trade harder than any other industry, has made things very uncertain for the Williams family and their sparkling Blue Diamond guest house in Springbok in the Northern Cape. But they are not letting the crisis go to waste. Pauline and Tony, together with two sons, are using the downtime during the lockdown to increase the green credentials of their business by setting up herb and vegetable production on the Blue Diamond’s beautiful 1000 square meter garden which will supply the establishment’s eatery when business gets going again. Another project is the redesign of the Blue Diamond’s kitchen, led by Pauline and Tony’s youngest son who has recently qualified as a chef. | 2020/09/15 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Answering adversity with entrepreneurship | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/answering-adversity-with-entrepreneurship | Answering adversity with entrepreneurship | Like thousands of South African business owners Elizabeth Baillie stared into the abyss as one of the strictest lockdowns in the world shut down the South African economy and her business. | 2020/08/18 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Finding the silver lining of lockdown | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/finding-the-silver-lining-of-lockdown | Finding the silver lining of lockdown | When President Ramaphosa announced the nationwide lockdown back in March, Natalie Gabriels knew that her corporate and events photography business would be hit hard. Like many other local business owners, Gabriels was initially anxious about the uncertain future, but she soon realised that a reflective hiatus was exactly what her business needed. | 2020/08/18 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Level 5 and 4 lockdown no time to sit idle, say business owners | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/level-5-and-4-lockdown-no-time-to-sit-idle-say-business-owners | Level 5 and 4 lockdown no time to sit idle, say business owners | No business is unaffected by the unprecedented lockdown and the resultant great economic freeze. But characteristically, business owners are not sitting still. All are busy drawing up applications for emergency relief, while some are making plans to diversify, negotiating with suppliers, catching up on paperwork, thinking about marketing campaigns and new ways of doing things, and even making plans to start new businesses. | 2020/05/11 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Manufacturing success for rebel business owner | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/manufacturing-success-for-rebel-business-owner | Manufacturing success for rebel business owner | Paul Pretorius is one of the small breed of people who have always known that they want to run their own business. Over his entire career, the 51-year-old business owner only ever worked for six months for someone else. | 2020/02/24 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Relationships central in this thriving factory | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/relationships-central-in-this-thriving-factory | Relationships central in this thriving factory | Lance Luiters is experiencing a problem that not many business owners think about. As his Cape Town based clothing factory, called Season’s Find, grows ever closer to employing 300 workers, he is finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of all his workers’ names. | 2020/02/24 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Industrial business built through relentless struggle for survival | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/industrial-business-built-through-relentless-struggle-for-survival | Industrial business built through relentless struggle for survival | A young Sipho Radebe might have laughed in disbelief if anyone had told him that he would one day build Mbali Industrial Solutions, a R140m-a-year engineering firm. More likely, he would just have ignored such an impossible dream, put his head down and continued working. | 2020/01/19 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Pioneering engineers doing it for themselves | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/pioneering-engineers-doing-it-for-themselves | Pioneering engineers doing it for themselves | In the early nineties, when the brutal conflict in KwaZulu-Natal was at its peak, it was no surprise that Bheki Lembede, the son of a domestic worker and a truck driver in Durban, scored low in almost every subject at school. Schooling in the killing fields of the war between the ANC and IFP was severely disrupted, and there were widespread fears that thousands of young South Africans’ futures would be destroyed even if they survived the conflict. | 2020/01/19 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Integrating technology and happiness into business | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/integrating-technology-and-happiness-into-business | Integrating technology and happiness into business | As a school boy, Brendan Bossé got his hands on the first rudimentary personal computers that came onto the market in the ‘80s, and was immediately smitten by the idea that they could be used to control the physical world. | 2019/12/12 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Twelve years of growth, and no end in sight for branding company | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/twelve-years-of-growth-and-no-end-in-sight-for-branding-company | Twelve years of growth, and no end in sight for branding company | So unstoppable has the growth of Basically Branding been over the last twelve years that it has had to move no fewer than seven times, each time with a bigger collection of machines that can print a logo on almost anything. Last year, the Johannesburg-based branding company moved for the first time out of rented premises into its own building, but not with any sense of settling down, it seems. | 2019/12/12 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Difficult start makes entrepreneur and business stronger. | | https://www.businesspartners.africa/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/difficult-start-makes-entrepreneur-and-business-stronger | Difficult start makes entrepreneur and business stronger. | Like so many business owners, Abegail Nakedi’s start-up experience was much harder than she ever could have imagined. In fact, her difficult start in business was probably worse than that of most business owners. | 2019/11/26 10:00:00 PM | | |
| This business owner wills his own luck | | https://www.businesspartners.africa/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/this-business-owner-wills-his-own-luck | This business owner wills his own luck | The story of the extraordinary rise of Steve Mululu from the slums of Nairobi to owner of a fast-growing group of upmarket gyms in Johannesburg contains a number of amazing lucky breaks. Look a bit closer, though, and you realise that this is a man who inserts himself into luck’s pathway by sheer force of will. | 2019/11/26 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Entrepreneur tells of hair-raising race to find finance | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/entrepreneur-tells-of-hair-raising-race-to-find-finance | Entrepreneur tells of hair-raising race to find finance | Having been in the Johannesburg property industry for more than twenty years, Gigi Demetriou immediately saw the potential in a dilapidated guest house he found in Rivonia. But he had no inkling of the hair-raising struggle that lied ahead before he would own it. | 2019/10/23 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Adventure-seeking trio cooks up a storm of a business | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/adventure-seeking-trio-cooks-up-a-storm-of-a-business | Adventure-seeking trio cooks up a storm of a business | One way of explaining why some people start their own businesses rather than working for others is their sense of adventure. The Maré siblings, who have been building a thriving catering company called D.O.U.G.H. in Pretoria over the past ten years, is strong evidence of a link between adventure seeking and entrepreneurship. | 2019/08/20 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Curiosity, tenacity make this business owner no roll-over | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/curiosity-tenacity-make-this-business-owner-no-roll-over | Curiosity, tenacity make this business owner no roll-over | Christine Geldart is used to the look in the eyes of many of the men in the metal industry when she walks into the meeting room, the look that says “Oh goodness, what does this little poppie know?” | 2019/08/20 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Bustling business career started at 12 | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/bustling-business-career-started-at-12 | Bustling business career started at 12 | You could say that Thobile Ntswana started her business career at the age of 12. Growing up in Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal, her father’s shop was a stone’s throw away from her school. Naturally, she spent her afternoons after school there. Her father was a teacher, so to him the shop was a side business. For Thobile, however, it became an all-consuming thing. She proved so useful in the business that she started doing more and more, until she was the one hiring, firing, ordering stock and generally running the show. | 2019/07/28 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Busy entrepreneurial husband and wife never stop growing | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/busy-entrepreneurial-husband-and-wife-never-stop-growing | Busy entrepreneurial husband and wife never stop growing | Some entrepreneurs shift in and out of working for other people throughout their careers, but Hesley and Bart de Klerk are of the kind who simply have to do their own thing. Both of them have only ever worked for someone else once for a few months before embarking on their entrepreneurial careers. | 2019/07/28 10:00:00 PM | | |
| From wheelbarrow deliveries to SABS accredited workshop | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/from-wheelbarrow-deliveries-to-sabs-accredited-workshop | From wheelbarrow deliveries to SABS accredited workshop | Not many successful factory owners can remember their first delivery vehicle as a wheelbarrow. OJ Matonsi recalls the time in the Tsakane Township in Brakpan when he welded steel window frames in his backyard and had them delivered to local home owners in a wheelbarrow. He had no car, and had to hire a bakkie to buy his raw materials from the Johannesburg steel merchants. | 2019/03/25 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Sky's the limit after aeronautical entrepreneurs gain property foothold | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/skys-the-limit-after-aeronautical-entrepreneurs-gain-property-foothold | Sky's the limit after aeronautical entrepreneurs gain property foothold | Location-sensitive businesses, usually retailers, often find themselves at the mercy of landlords who are aware of the fact that the business is dependent on the specific spot in which they trade. If the landlord refuses to renew the lease, the business can lose millions. | 2019/03/25 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Business built from scratch on trust and determination | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/business-built-from-scratch-on-trust-and-determination | Business built from scratch on trust and determination | The stylish, timeless furniture in the Classic Work Life showroom in Houghton, Johannesburg, conveys such a sense of luxurious durability that you’d think the business behind it must be a corporate itself. | 2019/02/20 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Small home-based business grows into bottle-making powerhouse | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/small-home-based-business-grows-into-bottle-making-powerhouse | Small home-based business grows into bottle-making powerhouse | What began as a tiny home-based business selling cool drink in novelty bottles to corner stores has turned into ATL Blow Moulders, a multi-million-rand a month plastic moulding business owned by a Johannesburg husband-and-wife team, and the growth of the business is showing no signs of slowing down. | 2019/02/20 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Determined entrepreneur hits gold-mine by pursuing his dream | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/determined-entrepreneur-hits-gold-mine-by-pursuing-his-dream | Determined entrepreneur hits gold-mine by pursuing his dream | Dave Coleman always wanted to be in the movies. He still remembers his school mates’ laughter when he revealed his ambition to them, but it never stopped him from dreaming. Eventually, he did not become a movie star, but it was through movies that he propelled himself out of poverty and into business success in a career worthy of a movie plot. | 2018/12/19 10:00:00 PM | | |
| Imagine starting a business and a degree at the same time - this entrepreneur did | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/imagine-starting-a-business-and-a-degree-at-the-same-time-this-entrepreneur-did | Imagine starting a business and a degree at the same time - this entrepreneur did | When Prashun Sharma, owner-manager of the glass and aluminium company Aluminium Doctor, decided to start his business seven years ago he faced an overtraded industry teeming with informal bakkie operators. | 2018/12/19 10:00:00 PM | | |
| 74-year-old pioneering entrepreneur ready for his next venture | | https://www.businesspartners.co.za/en-za/entrepreneurs-growth-centre/success-stories/south-africa/74-year-old-pioneering-entrepreneur-ready-for-his-next-venture | 74-year-old pioneering entrepreneur ready for his next venture | Rolly Nkawe’s first job was as a cashier in a municipal bottle store in Soweto at a time when black South Africans were not allowed to hold liquor licenses. The experience gave him the urgent wish to own his own business one day. | 2018/11/20 10:00:00 PM | | |
