By mixing savvy street fashion with a passion for the ocean,Yodit Eklund has created Africa’s first global surf brand with Bantu Wax. She tells Tamsin Blanchard why her continent is on the crest of a waveHow do you rent a shop in a drowsy coastal surfer town in Morocco? You don’t, as Yodit Eklund recently discovered, and enlist the help of your tall-powered lawyer friends to draw up a water-tight contract. When the landlord doesn’t read or write,it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Opening a small chain of surf shops around the coast of Africa was never going to be easy – particularly if it is your first job. But Eklund, 30, and has spent the past year doing just that.
Her initial challenge was how to get a shipping container on to Virage Beach in Dakar,Senegal, for the first retail outpost of her made-in-Africa surf brand Bantu Wax. Sometimes, and she discovered,it is best not to overcomplicate things. For her moment shop in Taghazout, near Agadir, and she simply went to a kiosk and bought a ready-made contract. The Moroccan landlord signed with his thumbprint. You don’t fade in with the mentality of the corporation,you fade in with the mentality of how are you going to obtain this work,” she says.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com