WOMAN OF THE FUTURE
CARA SAVEN Cara Saven Wall Design carasaven.com
In 2006, Cara Saven was working as a retail buyer for Woolworths when she fell pregnant with her first child. “At the time, I fully intended to come back to work, but once my child had been born, I knew I couldn’t.” So Cara cashed in her pension and spent a year “learning to be a mom” before she had to look at bringing in some money again.
Initially, she ran a small photography business, but an exciting decor trend at the time really piqued her interest. “Large-format wallpaper printing had just come into play, and I loved the medium and scale,” she says. She couldn’t give her business everything she knew it needed. As a full-time mother, for a while she had to hold herself back. “It was only when my eldest daughter was 10 that I took my foot off the proverbial brake.”
Officially launched in 2016, Cara Saven Wall Design has since gone on to produce and install wall art for some of South Africa’s finest hotels, homes and corporate spaces. It has become a leading name in bespoke wall designs, canvases, framed prints, and vinyl wall art. “The designs market themselves, and Instagram has become a great tool,” Cara says.
Her designs have also been featured in glossy magazines, which has contributed to brand recognition. Today, Cara Saven Wall Design has branches in the Netherlands, the US and Dubai. “The hope is that in three years, you’ll be able to find Cara Saven Wall Design in 20 regions globally.”
Cara credits the success of her business to the skills she learnt while working in retail. They allow her to create and curate designs that she knows will sell, and to manage a hardworking team. Her team is mostly made of working moms, so they’re always busy, but the pressures they share enable them to work together efficiently and smartly.
For Cara, being awarded the Woman of the Future title makes the years of hard work, juggling being a mother and an entrepreneur, worth it. “I always felt conflicted for having to put my business goals and ambitions on ice for those years when my kids were small,” she says. “But now I know it was all worth the sacrifice, the hard work, and the gut feeling that I had something big that I was sitting on. I just needed the time to grow it.”
Cara understands that wallpaper has the ability to completely transform a space, and when you do that, the added benefit is that the people living or working there also feel a shift. “That’s what I hope to leave behind: beautiful and exciting spaces that have been transformed using our wall coverings. I’d also like to leave a legacy of having built up a business while still being there for my kids.”