Momento's of Africa grew from a self-help
tapestry weaving scheme, introduced to assist unemployed people, often with scant
education, to earn an income. With the extended family, common throughout Africa,
one income can support a surprisingly large number of people.
Unexpectedly, the change of government in 1994
led to the closure of the scheme, leaving the permanent employees of the company without
work, and importantly, no marketing venue for those who had been trained.
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Several of the employees
supported their manager, who had decided to create a commercial venture that could carry
on, in part, the original work. Port Elizabeth Airport offered premises, and the
original four members of the company started up.
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Although in the first few months, sales were
predominantly textile products, by listening to their customers, Momento's built up a
knowledge of the needs of tourists. Before long a network of suppliers had been
built up through-out sub-Saharan Africa, and reports in the overseas press identified
Momento's as the best curio outlet in South Africa. |
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Weaving
was done at first in the shop, and even today, we have one tapestry loom there to show our
customers how tapestries are made. Demand for retailing space meant that blanket
weaving had to be moved, and we became "mill operators". Momento's first
factory was part of an old hanger. |
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Blanket production, and increased demand for tapestries,
gave us the incentive to move to a new modern factory, still within the confines of PE
Airport; and our old hangar was demolished to allow for airport improvements. |
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Whilst Momento's of Africa is a commercial company, with a profit motive, it has a
second purpose: to make sure the benefits of tourism to our country filter directly to
those previously disadvantaged members of our community who are prepared to grasp
opportunity.
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In this spirit, we were happy to support Tourism
Port Elizabeth and renovated the interior of the adjoining lighthouse at The Donkin. The
old light-house, which is a national monument was in need of care and
attention. Today it is an important attraction, with displays inside - and the best view of
the city and Algoa Bay from the top. |
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The next move was to open our first luxury goods store - MOGO
- at The Boardwalk. Not only is this the finest store of its kind in the Eastern
Cape, but provided a "shop window" for our export business.
When we went into KwaZulu-Natal in 2001 we
created a new legal entity - Momento's of Africa (KZN). This vehicle allowed us to
create new members there as well as in the original company. The first enterprise
there was the Moyisa shop.
Such had been the impact of MOGO and Moyisa
that we became inundated with demand from people who had bought our mohair goods and
wanted to import them into their own countries. At the start of 2002 the entire
existing production for the year was sold out! This meant we had to look for ways to
further increase production, this in turn meant we needed more space, and so a new factory was built alongside the old one - to effectively
triple our floor space.
Meanwhile back at head office new products
continue to be developed with Hand Knitting Yarn and finished Knitwear coming to the fore. |
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shown on another part of this web, are now distributed through South Africa, and nearly three
quarters of our production now goes overseas where it is sold in speciality stores and
boutiques. We continue to seek new challenges, and our future successes will be shown on
these pages. |
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2007 saw the
establishment of a shop in Cape Town
Airport and this was consolidated in 2008.
At the end of that year
we open our first outlet in
Johannesburg Airport. |
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Over the years Momentos has won
several awards; for Black Economic
Empowerment, BBBEE,
Best Product Awards, and our
CEO for Gender Empowerment. |
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