WEAVING A WAY OF LIFE
Plettenberg Bay textile mill Mungo is all about keeping things slow and sustainable. It’s a philosophy that permeates all aspects of the business, as MD Dax Holding tells the FM
The annual Mungo sale has become the stuff of legend. Each year, the Plettenberg Bay-based textile mill marks down a number of its high-end items — table and bed linen, and its signature flat-weave towels, among others — for a limited period.
The deals are so good, the sale has generated a fair bit of hysteria. At last year’s (pre-pandemic) event, for example, two women ran into the Plettenberg Bay store, jumped onto a table and screamed: “This is our table.”
It’s not something that sat well with Dax Holding, MD of the family-run business. “When people come into the shop and are rude to the shop assistant, I tell them straight: ‘You treat my staff with respect. You can shop here, but the minute you step over that line you can leave,’” he tells the FM.
“We bust our arses to make this product, and to make it as nice as possible, and it’s not easy. For someone to come in and claim ownership in such a disrespectful manner ... we’re all about customer service — we give very good customer service — but we’re also human beings. We’re doing what we can, so treat us with some respect. We’re very strict about that.”
This year, the sale went online for the first time. It was a more muted affair, perhaps, but no less popular. Demand was so overwhelming that Mungo decided to pause sales, and put up a message on its website saying it was consolidating. Once it had caught up on orders, the sale was a go again.
It was endearing that a company could be so honest about the situation it found itself in. It was overwhelmed, and that was that. Mostly, though, it was a reminder of the philosophy behind the brand: sustainability is a natural part of the operation, not a nice-to-have add-on.
Mungo got its start in 2000, when Holding’s father Stuart restored two antique looms and began selling limited textile runs in a shop run by his wife, Janet.
By then Stuart was already a master weaver, having worked in textiles for most of his life. Coming from the moors of Yorkshire, in the UK, he was an apprentice in the old silk mills of Lancaster in the 1960s, before travelling the world and ending up in SA.
Once in SA, he worked for companies in the textile industry as a weaving technician and loom tuner.
“SA didn’t have a lot of those skills,” says Holding. “So he was sought after.”
Stuart also became involved in hand-weaving blankets and curtains, and began exporting mohair blankets. But after selling half his business to Cape Mohair, he became disillusioned with both the industry and corporate retail, “and
how they don’t respect or nurture or consider manufacturers”.
Within years of Stuart leaving the business, the new owners had apparently taken the old looms, thrown them in a big hole and bought new equipment to improve efficiency.
“That story has played out in SA quite clearly over the past 20 years,” says Holding.
“Mungo is the result of [Stuart] wanting to create a business model that was truly sustainable from a production perspective, and he wanted to … be a price-giver, not a price-taker.”
As demand for its product grew, Mungo expanded beyond Janet’s shop, moving to a dedicated mill in an old dairy a few kilometres away.
Today, the company has its very own mill on the grounds of the Garden Route’s Old Nick Village, alongside a flagship store. It’s one of four stores the company operates in SA — it has two in Cape Town and one in Joburg — in addition to its online presence in SA, Europe and North America. It’s also looking to open an e-commerce site for Australia, or put energy into Singapore. South America is an untapped option, as is Asia.
And it’s looking to expand weaving capacity by adding 900m² to the back of the mill. The company may even expand beyond textiles, “bringing [its] philosophy into other elements of production”, Holding says.
But expansion brings its own existential crisis.
“It’s almost as if, in the world we live in, it’s imperative ... But how do you jump off that wagon and continue to be sustainable — not just environmentally, but as a business that is profitable, that has momentum?” he asks.
Last year, Mungo became SA’s first global organic textile standardcertified weaving mill. This means the cotton in its products has been grown, picked, spun and woven in the most sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially responsible way possible.
“Everyone in the supply chain is well paid — their safety is looked after,” says Holding, who took over the running of the business from his father about eight years ago.
Though Mungo would prefer to buy its organic cotton from Southern Africa, there isn’t a reliable supply, and “it’s difficult to match up the supply with the quality,” he says. For now, it brings in organic cotton from Turkey. Its nonorganic product comes from the region — SA, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Tanzania.
The company is very much a family affair. Holding’s sister, Tessa Holding, is the creative director (she has a marketing and media background, and is a photographer), and his brotherin-law, Craig Harding, is the web designer and drives the online platform.
And Holding himself? Well, he’s “a difficult one to explain”, he says.
He studied cabinet-making and furniture design, before going to work for a large UK organisation. It ran a county fair, which meant managing large groups of people. He learnt about operations, timing, working to deadlines and working with people.
Later he spent time in the catamaran charter industry. There, he says, he learnt about the psychology of sales, as well as what he didn’t like — and he found the point at which one can lose one’s integrity in the business process.
“Put those things together, and you kind of get what I am,” he says. “I lean a lot on the experience my family has had over the years. I’ve learnt to do things differently.”
It helps, he says, that he’s been around the business for so long, and that his parents are entrepreneurs.
Stuart remains part of the company today, but his involvement is now around sampling and designing.
The business also employs about 90 people, including some who’ve been working for Mungo for decades — with their siblings and cousins thrown into the mix too.
One might expect a business such as this, with a turnover of more than R50m, to be something of a takeover target, but that hasn’t been the case.
In Holding’s view, it’s because Mungo isn’t an easy business to buy. “Our business model is not very easily transferable because of the location, the skills and the operations,” he says.
For a start, the company weaves products on looms that date back to the 1890s.
“We haven’t got a loom newer than 1984,” Holding says. “Our economies of scale, from an industrial production sense, don’t compute.”
The industry more generally is also not in the best of shape. Holding talks of how vertical mills have closed due to a lack of government support — though he says the Industrial Development Corp is now desperately trying to create employment and support the ravaged industry.
But Mungo is a small player in the sector,
“not in any way comparative to the mills of the big businesses”. They would have about 1,500 looms at their strongest. “We have 15.”
But there’s intention behind the slower pace of production.
“We work on the opposite side of an economy that’s trying to be more efficient and faster” says Holding. “We weave slowly. You can get an air-jet modern loom that will run at speeds of 500 or 600 threads a minute, but we would have to use harder, stronger yarn with higher twist, and this would undermine the quality.
“There’s an unexplainable tactile feeling that we get from a piece of cloth. There’s a lot that goes into getting a cloth to handle that way.
“These old looms are slow and we don’t stress the yarn. It’s poetic and it’s philosophical and it’s what people find so attractive about what we do.”
That’s a far cry from the usual push for profit and productivity.
But even if a potential buyer did approach Mungo, it’s unlikely the family would sell the business at this point.
“It would be quite a significant compromising of our values. Which is not to say we wouldn’t consider a partnership down the line — if it
These old looms are slow and we don’t stress the yarn. It’s poetic and it’s philosophical and it’s what people find so attractive about what we do
Dax Holding
didn’t compromise within a strategy towards maybe doing something.
“I went for a surf this morning. I like that lifestyle. I’m not in it for the money. My father gets excited by a piece of cloth coming off the loom and finding that old loom and bringing it back and working it out, and giving it new life.”
Holding expects that, as he gets older, he may become more philosophical and altruistic. He talks of Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, an American outdoor-clothing company that’s known for its environmental focus (Chouinard is also a surfer). He talks of Richard Branson and Virgin, and how they — in their own generation, and in their own way — have moved forward.
“The question really is not: will we grow; will we expand? Because yes, we will. The question is how.”
Already he’s noticing a change in retail behaviour. “It was an ego thing, having a 100m²-200m² store with fancy points of sales, a couch, flashy lights, a cappuccino machine, and you could come in for this retail experience. Maybe we’re shifting … our business is going to grow online, and we’ll still retain its connection with the process and the experience.”
Covid, of course, has changed things.
There was a downturn in sales, with Mungo’s retail shops closed. And the public tours of the mill — the production process is on show to visitors — had to be put on hold. But the company dropped its prices, got busy on social media, and started making masks and scrubs, creating a narrative of hope and resilience.
“It wasn’t a marketing gimmick, it was a natural reaction to the issue,” says Holding.
“Putting up the second phase of this mill ...
it’s a bold move. Who’s to say what’s going to happen? But it’s not sitting back or sitting down — it’s trying to influence your destiny.”
Overall, the company’s sales figures were maintained from the previous year, “for which we consider ourselves very lucky”.
One could argue Mungo’s wealthier clientele weren’t as negatively affected by the pandemic, but Holding believes there’s been a shift in priorities.
“You could say they couldn’t go skiing, so what else could they do? But I think there’s a shift to the organic element, to what’s real. There is value in quality. Our towel will last you twice as long as the one you buy for a quarter of the price,” he says.
The company also seems to be benefiting from the “Zoom boom”, with people relocating to towns such as Plettenberg Bay because they now work remotely.
“People are saying: ‘I can go for a swim in the morning with my kids before work
rather than sitting in the traffic for two hours’, so why not move here?” he says.
“It’s a shift away from ... buying stuff because you’re bored or hiding behind your walls … Get out and live your life. I think we embody that.”
Holding was recently in the mill’s office, when he heard an explosive noise. It turned out one of the looms was aflame.
The fire was put out quickly, but there was a moment when Holding realised the importance of what a business can bring to your life. “It forms the fabric of who you are. If you’re not just doing it for the money, it becomes very important to where you’re going and how you structure your life.
“It’s not hiding behind a spreadsheet — it’s very real.”
And at the centre of it all, is family. “This business is here,” he says. “This family is here, holding it all together. It’s a very raw and very real story of life and business.”