The Sunday News
Nigel Siziba, Sunday Life reporter
Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. You can see and feel everything in clothes. Grapevine is one of famous local clothing labels that have stood the test of time.
It was founded in 2005 by Lwazi Mphoko and Naboth Rizzla and it specialises on street wear from t-shirts, caps and hoodies.
In an interview with Sunday Life, Rizzla narrated the tale of Grapevine.
“Its formation was funny because we wanted a source of income to fund our music projects and having our clothing label popped up and we agreed with my friend Lwazi and Grapevine Clothing was born”, said Rizzla.
He revealed some of the projects they have done through Grapevine.
“Grapevine has dressed quite a number of artistes like Cal_vin when he went to UK, Tivo, Hired Gun and POY. There is Grapevine rap battle in September against guys from Namibia and we also promoted a competition called Bulawayo Top Five Music,” said Rizzla.
Asked how he has managed to sustain his business for such a long time, he said;
“Our little secret is that we sell limited goods. We don’t produce goods that are too many so we stay small, this makes it easy to come up with sustainable decision since we are a small business and we also have the ability to be visible through different activities we do,” he said.
He said they have taken the label beyond borders.
“We also have customers overseas in places like Australia and United Kingdom. We have flexible payment methods and those who buy overseas get a little extra small item for free. When we started we used to sell to our relatives and few customers and now we are even selling internationally. I can proudly say we have improved over the years and recently we managed to get a loan and that money boosted us as a company”, he said.
He further commented on the talent that Bulawayo has.
“We have a lot of talented designers in Bulawayo but they need consistence and also collaborate more and young designers must have ambition and a dream and know where they are going.”
