Small start, but Mabel takes the gap beautifully

ENTREPRENEUR: INITIALLY THIS MARKET DID NOT USE MAKEUP MUCH

Atteridgeville-born Ledwaba now has a thriving beauty business.

Growing up in Atteridgeville in Pretoria back when salons only focused on relaxers and products such as Black Like Me, Mabel Ledwaba, pictured, wondered if these were the only beauty treatments black women in her community needed.

This led to her pursuing a career in the beauty industry, first as an employee for major personal care and beauty companies.

Ledwaba was tasked with growing sales with her focus mainly on the black female market. At the time, that market rarely used makeup and other related beauty products on a daily basis and they needed to learn how to use the products she wanted to sell to them.

She relied heavily on agents on the ground and her own distinctive beauty knowledge.

It was challenging at first. Perfumes were an easy sell as everyone used them, but makeup was a truly difficult sell. First, the products had to match the skin tones of the market she was targeting. Secondly, she had to teach them the right way of applying makeup for different occasions.

A few years later while in the corporate space, Ledwaba began yearning for better opportunities in the beauty industry. The best way to determine whether she could make it on her own or not depended on research. Most beauty business models she investigated didn’t excite her until she stumbled upon the idea of a nail bar. Nail bars are not easy to set up and require a sizeable amount of money. With her savings, she set up the business servicing the female black market.

“My career life in the corporate beauty space taught me a lot about the beauty industry.

“At first, I was mainly focused on the middle working class, offering them the best beauty products the world has to offer and also learning the buying habits of this market.

“This experience broadened my understanding of target markets, from what to sell to which target market to what each target market is willing to spend on a single product.”

In 2013, when the economy was slow and consumers were cutting down on spending, the beauty industry continued to grow in leaps and bounds.

Her business expanded into a full-on beauty and spa establishment. Havillah Beauty and Spa had branches in various malls and centres and was developing a makeup range and training academy.

This growth presented challenges and she had to rework her business model. The makeup line went from producing a variety of products to focusing on a single product line of foundations designed for black skin tones. The business was also redesigned to include franchises.

Now, 10 years later, Havillah Beauty and Spa has expanded to training young makeup artists, with some of its graduates employed in television.