Setting the Scene...

Ok so a few people have been asking me what the hell do you do...you’ve quit your job and spent your life savings on what exactly?

Ok so to put the record straight, technically I’ve started a design & merchandising company, well by virtue of the fact that we design and sell the merchandising but for me this is not what it’s all about...what we are really about is music, South African music to be exact!! 

I have the deepest love and the greatest passion for music in South Africa...and when I say music I’m talking classic contemporary South African music...Moses Molelekwa, Sipho Gumede, Caiphus Semenya, Busi Mhlongo to name just a few. These are musicians who have made and continue to make South African music, rooted in South Africa with South African rhythms and South African sounds. Music that has told South African stories about South African people. 

When I look around there is little to no evidence, other than in their music, that these musicians.  These musicians have contributed richly to our musical heritage. For reasons I fail to understand South African people have not taken it upon themselves keep the music alive. So here I am, my humble little self, taking on the task in my own small little way.  We want to create work that can be sold to those who share the same passion we have for music. This is the basis of what we do it's in our mission...“Through design we want to capture the memory of South African Music legends, remember their brilliance, celebrate their talent and pay tribute to the contribution they made to our musical heritage”

As for the design side of things, well I’ve always thought of myself as a creative person despite the fact that I can neither draw or design, I’ve left that to very capable team…my job is to inspire the idea, harness it and bring it to life.  When it comes to the designs our philosophy says it all…”To achieve the visual equivalent of the chord change that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up” ambitious I know, but so were the Wright Brothers and they managed to make it work!

The merchandising, well it just seemed like the right fit for the industry and something yet to be explored in South Africa at least not at the levels I want to try and explore it. 

I work with a fantastically talented team of designers who share my philosophy and mission, and together we look to change the way South Africans see South African music. 

It’s perhaps not ground breaking like Google or Microsoft but it’s grounded in something I am passionate about and so for me it’s my baby and I love it!

This is Thuli signing out...

It all begins here...

It all started about 7 years ago; I had this brilliant idea...Music meets Design, meets merchandising...the perfect marriage! It seemed a lot easier said than done. However the time was not right and the ‘University of Life’ still had a few valuable lessons to teach me. Fast forward 6 years, and a year ago I decided it was now or never, I don’t know why I felt that way...after pondering on it for a few weeks I decided screw it, I’m throwing my balls to the wall and I’m going to do it! And so my journey began. Looking back I am glad I didn’t try starting this project 7 years ago, it would have been a disaster. 

It’s taken a year, 4 designers later and here we are on the precipice of printing our first set of designs. It is a triumphant feeling!

So I guess my very first lesson is that I have learned is it take sheer determination and guts to stand up and say I am going to start my own business. In the year that I have tried to get this baby off the ground I have approached a lot of people to assist in some way or another and very few of them have stood up to the plate. Now 1 year later the more people I tell about my little venture the more people want and are willing to help. It would have been easy to give up after the 5^th rejection, throw in the towel because no one else believed in what I did or believed in me the way I did. In the end it boils down to whether you have the determination to keep moving and the guts to carry on in the face of rejection, or do you whittle away at the prospects of what other people think? I’m certain that my days of rejection are not over, in fact I can guarantee that there will be many more along this path, but I think I have enough faith in my own ability to know that what others think is merely their own opinion and their opinion doesn’t necessarily make them right. Hey Robert Mugabe has an opinion after all and it doesn’t necessarily make him right!

Here is how I see it...I don't think I'm going to fail, but if I were to fail then all I can say is I was wrong, & the hardened realists who kept their feet on the ground were right. But at least I tried and my life is richer for it!

This blog is my journey, a chronically of doing business my way ...Business according to Thuli. Although I have yet to succeed in the conventional sense I know that with every lessoned learned along the way, good or bad, therein lies the success. This is going to be the wildest ride of my life. I have no doubt that it will be thrilling, exciting, nerve wrecking, exhausting, even terrifying at times...hopefully at the end of it all, I’ll have a great story to tell my grandchildren!

This is Thuli signing out!