CRÉATION AFRICA: This fashion-focused consulting firm wants to build the ‘LVMH of Africa’

Kirsten Leo has a fairly simple way of explaining one of the biggest problems facing talented fashion designers.

“It’s all great to make a beautiful garment. But then you’re just making a product. You’re not building a business.”

And that, in many ways, is where Leo comes in.

The founder and CEO of LEO SZN works behind the glamour of African fashion, helping designers negotiate the decidedly less-glamorous business of fabrics, production, pricing, cash flow, compliance, intellectual property and getting their clothes in front of buyers.

She is not a designer herself.

“I’m far more analytical, far less creative,” she says, laughing.

That is precisely why the partnership works. “I think that’s also why it’s such a joy that I get to work with creatives. You can’t put a creative in a box. But I can take the idea and mould it.”

Watch out for that troublesome ego

Leo says designers have to wear an extraordinary number of hats, and one of the biggest obstacles she encounters is not a lack of talent. It is pride.

“If you’ve got too much pride, you’re too proud to ask for help. It really does stand in the way.”

Ego, she says, is not necessarily a bad thing either. Artists need a degree of confidence to create something and put it out into the world. The trouble starts when ego becomes “disruptive and dehumanising or disrespectful to others”.

Then there is the reality of turning an inspired sketch into something somebody will actually buy. LEO SZN researches consumer behaviour, trends, textiles, imports and other developments affecting the industry, and uses that information when advising clients.

A wonderful creative idea may simply not make commercial sense in South Africa at that particular time.

Leo’s job is sometimes to say so. She is equally forthright about artificial intelligence. “I do [use AI], but I try not to rely on it. Everything needs human interaction. Everything needs human approval, validation.”

She has seen designers arrive with collections or designs generated using AI and says the shortcomings can be obvious when an idea has to become an actual garment. “AI should help us with operations. It should not help us with creativity. It shouldn’t replace our creativity.”

The give-me-a-million-rand problem

Preserving craftsmanship matters to her. So does convincing designers that beautiful clothes alone are not enough to attract investment. Leo believes that often the problem is not that there is no investment available to African fashion businesses, but that businesses are not investment-ready.

“Building a business means being compliant and having a plan and a strategy and understanding how cash flow works and being able to tell another person what that means for your business.”

She puts the problem rather more colourfully: too often the pitch amounts to: “Look at this beautiful thing I made. Give me a million rand.”

LEO SZN earns its income through consulting, service packages and retainers. A designer might approach the company with sketches for a collection and need help finding the right fabrics, costing production or producing a sample. Leo then draws on a network of pattern makers, artisans and clothing manufacturers. The bigger ambition is much bolder.

When Leo pitched her vision during the Création Africa process, she told the panel: “I would like to build the LVMH of Africa.”

She is now one of the 15 creative entrepreneur finalists who will undergo an intensive business incubation programme overseen by the Embassy of France and the French Institute of South Africa (Ifas). 

For Leo, the comparison with the global luxury group is about creating an ecosystem capable of turning African designers into what she calls “luxury retail mini houses”. She envisages a network stretching from pattern makers and technical garment construction through manufacturing and ultimately into retail.

“We want to be able to house these spaces,” she says. “Through discipline and through capital and investment, we could build something like that for the continent.”

Creating market access

Création Africa is already helping her turn part of that ambition into something concrete. Leo pitched the African Luxury Index, or ALI, a project designed to work with up to 15 designers, helping them develop collections from their initial sketches through a series of workshops.

The process will culminate in a showroom where retail and boutique buyers can view the collections – creating the market access that emerging designers often struggle to secure.

The project has received initial funding from the French Institute and Uber Africa. The incubation programme has also changed LEO SZN itself. What has she reconsidered? “Almost every aspect of the business,” says Leo. 

She says it has made her more confident in dealing with clients and has helped her grow a business that once consisted of Leo alone into a four-person team.

There have been harder lessons along the way. Asked whether she has ever backed a business idea that failed, the answer comes immediately.

“Don’t do business with friends.” She laughs, but the lesson was a painful one. “I’m still coming out of the car crash of it all.”

It is perhaps another reason Leo has become so focused on putting proper structures behind creativity. Of the 28 clients LEO SZN has serviced over the past two years, Leo says at least 26 have continued developing collections, showcasing locally or internationally, or securing retail placements.

Some return when it is time to develop the next collection.

For Leo, that is not a sign that the designer has failed to become independent. It is evidence of the role she wants LEO SZN to occupy: the business and technical support sitting behind the creative mind. And she has no desire to take over that creative job herself.

The designer brings the idea.

Leo intends to help build the business around it – and, eventually, an African luxury ecosystem around them all. DM

Our writing about Création Africa is made possible in partnership with the French Institute of South Africa (Ifas). Création Africa is an initiative of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of France in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi, and Ifas.