Becoming a fashion designer takes more than just pen to paper… It involves hours of design, artwork, textile sourcing, manufacturing and everything that goes in-between creating a brand that is unique enough to compete in an ever-growing South African market.
With a valuable touch of local flair, the Atlantic “Apara O Thale” brand is paving the way forward for fashionista’s with their premium styling, as well as quality and value to consumers nationwide. With a breadth of items including, men’s and women’s golfers, crew-necks, sweaters, sweater dresses, hoodies and hoodie dresses, the founder of the brand, Hardley Matlwa-Seleka, so cleverly designed and tailored their inventory to meet the specific needs of their clientele.
Fashion Scoop caught up with the Founder, Hardley Matlwa-Seleka, who tells us more about this exciting new brand.
What should people know about the Atlantic “Apara O Tlale” brand?Atlantic “Apara O Tlale” is a proudly South African Premium brand that produces the best quality clothing line in the country. The quality of the brand and the quality of the clothing will always be our priority as the brand. At Atlantic Apara O Tlale, our aim is also to ensure that we maintain the standard of our brand, and our customer will always come first. We also on the other hand, try our level best to ensure that our employees are happy so that they can give a good service to our customers
What items is your most popular and why?Golf shirts and our signature jeans are our most popular as they are the main reason for creating this brand. We came to realise that local brands that produces this type of quality are rare – you can actually count them.
With jeans being a very specific buy for some, why opt for creating your own range?I did extensive research, saw a loop hole and came to a realisation that there is a number of local clothing companies/brands that produce the quality of clothing that I like. I took that as an advantage of starting my own proudly South African black-owned clothing brand.
Your brand prides itself on high quality and premium items – why is this important to you?People love quality, expensive and stylish clothing and we offer all these at a reasonable price; and we are proud of the quality that is being produced by the brand
Who is your perfect consumer?My perfect consumers are anyone between the ages of 18 to 35 who can actual wear this brand at any event be it school, the work place and even the golf course.
How long is the whole design to delivery process and what does it entail?First of all, I did a research based on the quality that I wanted, I had to call different mass production companies to help create samples of the quality I want. I even went to an extent of getting samples from international companies because I wanted it to be the best quality of clothing to ever be produced locally. Overall I had managed to choose five companies out of nine to help me with my brand three of them are proudly South African and the other two are international.Along the process myself and the team came up with different designs of clothing that we wanted to produce and did mock-ups to begin with the bulk production of the clothes.The concept, brainstorming and the planning took us eight months. The whole process of production took another eight months for us to reach the final product.The journey was not easy finding the right mass production companies of the quality I wanted, finding the right designs and getting them approved, funding the whole project, being rejected by production companies and discouraging the whole concept, getting negative comments from people who said it will fail and fighting with employees to get things off the ground but through it all I managed to pull through and believing in the idea that I had and today ATLANTIC APARA O TLALE is a reality.
What has been one of the hardest challenges since starting your fashion brand?The hardest challenges that I came across are three, firstly – finding the right mass production company to produce the clothing and secondly – funding this project and thirdly ensuring that I receive all the stock requested from mass production companies in the quality we agreed on.
What makes you Proudly South African?Recognising your dreams, and working towards it and encouraging my fellow brothers and sisters showing them that dreams and hard work can become a reality – especially if you put in the effort.
What are you most proud of when it comes to your brand Atlantic “Apara O Tlale”?The one thing that I can say is, that I am proud that I am going to be part of the people who will be creating employment in our country (RSA) as the employment rate is very low and this brand is not just about me, but people must and will benefit from Atlantic Apara O Tlale.
Atlantic “Apara O Tlale” is a proudly South African premium Kasi brand, founded in 2019 with the vision of exploring the best quality clothing which would ultimately spark innovation and creativity with a local feel.
‘Ke nyaka batho ba tlale gore it’s possible and that black businesses can provide high quality clothing to the world,” says Hardley ‘Noko’ Matlwa – Seleka
Find out more at https://shopatlantic.co.za
