Online marketing

Kgomo sold her first batch of dolls through word of mouth as well as at her mother’s guesthouse, but sales were discouraging. She was selling between 10 and 15 a month at the beginning. The excuses Kgomo received on a regular basis were that there was no demand and no market for them. For almost a decade, her first batch of dolls sat gathering dust in her garage.

“I just went with a hunch. When I look back at it now, I realize that the market for the black dolls was not ready in 2005,” she said in retrospect.

“I had the products with me already, and I had to find another way to sell them and distribute them,” she said, finally deciding to take her doll business online. In just three months, her sales had more than doubled. Kgomo said that the demand for black dolls in South Africa and the African market as a whole has grown in the past three years with more and more people becoming conscious of their origins and what their children play with. The dolls reflect the reality of their world.

Today, the Ntomb’enhle Dolls sells 150 to 200 units in a good month and the customer base is now global. While continuing to create her traditional dressed dolls, Kgomo is also working on new products in collaboration with another South African woman.

“The new range is going to have three styles: the evening look, the day look, and the casual look,” she said. This is in response to requests for more modern fashionable dolls, which will see a December or early