SA woman’s swim caps for big hair
Tired of sitting on the sidelines at pools and beaches, this enterprising young woman created a swimming cap for big hair
NECESSITY is the mother of invention – a Cape Town woman has confirmed the truth in this saying.
She grew tired of spending hours drying her waist-length dreadlocks after a dip in the pool and fed up with hanging around on the beach instead of plunging into the waves because she couldn’t face the thought of wet hair for hours on end.
Nomvuyo Treffers tried to find a swimming cap to cover her long, thick locks but there was nothing suitable on the market. So the intrepid entrepreneur decided to bridge the gap and come up with a solution of her own. The result: the Swimma – a big-hair swimming cap that’s selling like hotcakes.
“It pained me to see my kids swimming without me. I hated sitting there while they shouted, ‘Mommy, come!’ ” says Nomvuyo (40), a photographer.
“The perception out there is black people can’t swim. More than anything I wanted to prove this wrong.”
At first she decided to have caps custom-made for herself and her daughters Zawabo (17), Zawadi (10) and Tamasha (8). But then she asked herself, why pay someone else to make a cap when she could run with the idea and turn it into a business. Not only would it change her life, she reasoned, it would give others like her the chance to have more fun.
And so the Swimma cap was born.
SHE started her enterprise in 2010 and business was slow at first. But after marketing her product online Nomvuyo is now practically swimming in orders. Swimmas come in two sizes – Afro regular and Afro large – and are made from a waterproof silicone material. They’re designed for all kinds of big-volume hair, including curly, wavy, twisted, weaves, braids and dreadlocks.
The caps cost between R90 and R200 and can last for years, Nomvuyo says on her Facebook page.
With more enquiries streaming in, she has stockists in East London, Grahamstown, Polo24 kwane, Pretoria and Johannesburg and the business has reached international markets in the USA and Europe. She makes caps for bigger hair only as “there are already enough caps out there for the general markets”. She’s both amazed and humbled by the demand for her caps. “It’s all thanks to social media. We had huge volumes of traffic the moment I reached out on the various platforms. It would be great to venture into countries like Ethiopia where there’s great online demand for Swimma,” she says. The business did have its challenges though, says Nomvuyo, who’s married to businessman Theo Treffers and lives in Salt River. Finding a manufacturer who understood the brand and getting the sizes and colours right were major obstacles. Another challenge is competition from copycats but she’s trying not to be discouraged by people who want a piece of the pie. “It’s a dog-eat-dog business. You need to work hard to grow your own. I’m staying focused and looking for things no one else is offering.” And if she needs a guinea pig she can test the product on herself – or the daughters who have helped thei r mother become the successful businesswoman she is.