Founded by Katlego Seretlo from the Vaal in the south of Johannesburg, Buddy Apparel is on its way to success. With their authentic and Mzansi inspired designs, learn how this brand came to be and what has made it so unique.
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According to Seretlo, the initial concept was to have a clothing store to in-house every local brand there is in South Africa. The task appeared complex to execute as local brands wanted them to stock from them instead of selling for them of which there was no budget for. Seretlo began brainstorming a couple of designs that would be dope to drop on one of these brands they had approached and that’s when the idea hit: to start a new brand of their own.
“I then created our first piece that I only did for myself and the response was crazy cause I just did one garment and on the first day I received over 20 orders. I was surprised because the print was done wrong and it seemed like our audience didn’t care whether the logo was up side down they just liked it and the fact that it was done by us.”
– Katlego Seretlo
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From then on the brand started to gain traction with many people wanting to be part of the Buddy Apparel lifestyle and culture. The brand thrives on collaboration of which they learned the importance of from their big time influence and inspiration, Mpumelelo Frypan Mfula. Now with the sky as the limit, the brand hopes to further expand and grow into bigger markets around South Africa, specifically ekasi where it all started.
“The dream or our mid term plan is to open our first flagship store in our hood, we never going to the city, we want to empower our youth. In the hood, our plan is to hire our own friends, make sure we decrease the unemployment rate in our hood. If successful, trust us we still not going to go to the city we going to open another in a different hood and so on. The only way to help is to stop running away and facing the problem at hand.”
