Early lessons from parents helped entrepreneur to flourish

IT was her domestic worker mother, also a dressmaker, who encouraged Ntombie Nonxuba to start her own clothing manufacturing business, which now supplies uniforms to Pick n Pay stores.

Nonxuba studied clothing management in Cape Town and after a stint at a factory for a major clothing retailer, she launched Rise Uniforms at her home.

A short while later she was training women in Khayelitsha how to use sewing machines and started seeking contracts to supply uniforms to schools, churches and even her former employer’s stores.

When she approached Pick n Pay for funding she learnt more about their enterprise development programme and signed up.

“This contract has helped a lot. We managed to employ an extra 12 people. We are now 22 full-time staff members,” said Nonxuba.

Running her factory, now in an industrial park in Philippi, takes her back to her childhood.

Money was not something Nonxuba’s parents would hand over to their children. She says they “had to work for it”.

“My mother was a domestic worker in Johannesburg and attending sewing school. She would make clothes and my father would sell them.

“They returned to the Eastern Cape and then my mother started supplying schools with uniforms. I started to work with her when I was 13. She taught me how to sew when I was at primary school.”

Nonxuba moved to Cape Town to study and when she asked her mother for money, “she sent me a small sewing machine”.

Nonxuba said one of the main challenges of running a small business was retaining staff. “Staff turnover is high.” But she wants to “empower people so they can go and work anywhere”.