Inga Gubeka started his entrepreneurial career in luxury leather goods brand, Inga Atelier, with a mission of being recognized internationally as one of the best African-made luxury goods brands. Although every businesses thrive to fill a possible market gap, but Gubeka is a curating a niche for himself in the world of luxury to satisfy his clientele’s appetite for leather products.
“I realized there’s a gap in the market for luxury leather goods, especially ones that are locally-made,” Gubeka told Business Insider.
The young designer began his journey as a unique designer. He was into interior design, as he graduated with a degree in interior design from the Durban University of Technology.
As a little boy then from the village of Engqeleni in the Eastern Cape, with nothing but dreams of sharing his creativity with the world, he founded his first company Indalo Décor in 2013. The company was into making handcrafted wooden and leather bags clutches, backpacks, and accessories as well as interior decorating items, such as lighting solutions and clocks.
At age 28, Gubeka became the youngest South African to have a whiskey named after him after he designed the bottle. Glenfiddich named a premium single malt whisky after him in 2015.
With the success Indalo Décor was accruing, Gubeka was one of four South Africans to be featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2016. However, with Gubeka’s awareness on edging administrative works over designing, he resigned to found his luxury goods brand, Inga Atelier, with his brick-and-mortar location in Cape Town.
The focus of his lifestyle brand is to create luxury leather accessories. The bags have now gained global recognition, as they are not doing badly at the home-front, South Africa. He do make statement of his brand “as a fusion of African luxury and Scandinavian design elements, with specifics on clean lines, attention to detail and simplicity.”
As a visionary entrepreneur, Gubeka believes in excellence. The leather he uses is mostly sourced from Ethiopia and some South African vendors. It takes nearly five hours to create a single bag. He oversees the designing and cutting. Then his highly qualified and trained team hand stitches and assembles the bags. The stitching is especially a slow process because “everything has to be accurate”.
In February 2019, he sold out his entire range of luxury leather bags after tweeting about his company. “Sales have been ridiculously crazy,” he said at the time.
The Durban raised designer has had the enviable opportunity to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where he distributed 120 leather bags to all 120 diplomats including South African president Cyril Ramaphosa.
Gubeka believes there is a market for his products and being a Black man will not stop him from thriving in his chosen line of work. He rightfully said, “the right products don’t know color.”
“The world is my oyster, our time is now as black people and we have arrived,” he told GQ.
