Building AYANA

Launching next week, AYANA is South African retail’s new womenswear challenger, and she’s got big ambitions. Pepkor’s specialty division wants to do more than claim a piece of the category — they want to dominate it.

The brief is stacked:

• Break through to customers in a highly competitive retail environment & category

• Divert and capture them from local and global category leaders and new, super-powered challengers

• Get shoppers who are already price-sensitive to break bread with a new brand, while dealing with a tough economic outlook

To win, AYANA won’t get to play small.

But with 32 stores ready to go next week (plus online), a collection of fashion-forward wardrobe heroes, and a ready-to-swipe price point, it doesn’t look like they intend to.

Table of Contents

• The Opportunity

• The Brand

• The Team

• The Collection

• The Big Question

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The Opportunity

Pepkor holds massive market share in value-driven kidswear. It’s an important segment for their bottom line, but it’s a huge piece of a modest pie. Womenswear, on the other hand, is the biggest fashion retail segment in South Africa — and also Pepkor’s smallest fraction of turnover.

“That was the initial kickstarter to it, and then they kind of went around trying to figure out how they're going to make this happen,” AYANA Buying & Creative Manager Sheri-Lee Carver-Brown began on a virtual call, breaking down AYANA’s origins, offering and ambitions.

The group’s first idea was to grow womenswear at Ackermans, the 109-year-old, 700+ store-strong value chain they acquired in 1984. The resulting standalone women’s stores didn’t stick, but they provided valuable lessons — as well as the brick & mortar sites for AYANA’s broad launch footprint.

“They did a lot of research within the South African market, and it was actually quite cool to see that. I don't often see a lot of the South African retailers spending that many resources on research and really understanding the customer. They found that, the South African female shopper, she really likes to shop for herself and she wants a place that she can escape… when she's shopping for her kids and shopping for everybody else, she kind of puts herself second. So she wants a destination where it is just about her.“

The Brand

AYANA is a standout in the Pepkor speciality stable, a division that includes Tekki Town, Code, SPCC and Refinery — all acquisitions, in one way or another. Instead of retrofitting a purchase with existing elements that may or may not be fit for purpose, the decision was made to build from scratch. All they had to do was come up with a good name that wasn’t already taken.

“Every name under the sun is registered already… our executive Shaun Hoddy (CEO, Refinery & AYANA), he wanted a name that when you look at it, it doesn't really need much of an explanation, and when you look at the logo, when you look at the name, it's easy to pronounce, it's easy to spell… very passionate about finding a name that had African roots, in the sense that we are an African retailer; we are led by African team members. So he was quite passionate about the name having that angle. So AYANA is Swahili for beautiful flower; beautiful bloom… and when we looked at the meaning in other cultures as well, they were also beautiful and also positive. So it just felt like it ticked every every box.“

The clothes won’t be the only brand element shaking things up: Expect an in-store experience with a difference. “With our store design, the objective behind it was to really make it as modular as possible. Fashion is changing all the time… and we wanted the store design not to be too limited. You know traditionally you have a denim area, a lingerie area, and then when those consumer trends shift you’re a bit stuck with store design.“

The Team

With almost 15 years of marketing & buying experience across TFG, Media24 & Pepkor, Carver-Brown signed on to lead development at the brand (after being approached 3 times over the course of a year) on the condition that it would bring something different to the SA market. A 17-person team was assembled to define and materialise that difference, starting with the right buyers, store planners and designers. “They've really gone and scoured South African retail to find a group of really passionate, experienced retailers to come and make this dream a reality.“

Along with experience, skill & taste, the squad’s secret sauce is that they are the consumer they’re solving for. Aside from CEO Shaun Hoddy and 2 men who have since left the brand, AYANA is an all-woman team.

“We all have similar frustrations within the South African retail climate,” Sheri-Lee explains. “We're so passionate about the different fields that we work in, and we just want to bring beautiful fashion at decent prices to the South African customer… there's a taste level that’s not always there in South African fashion, there’s a limit on choice, and sometimes when you want that beautiful quality garment or that bespoke item, you've got to spend like, R2000+ on a garment… We’re saying, there's got to be a smarter way to do that, if we all pull our experiences and our skills together and collaborate, and we think we've cracked it.“

The Collection

Via webcam, Sheri-Lee presented an incredibly pragmatic collection that more than checks the function box on one end of its range, and nails the current mood with statement pieces on the other. It’s balanced, easy to wear, and far broader than launch photos (or even images supplied here) suggest.

“The buyers are the people that are making sure that the dream comes to life and that the customer is happy, but the focus is that we have to design more from scratch. We have to be creating more, and creating time in the critical path to allow for that.” The design-led lens offers a missing everyday edge, intentionally woven in from a confident, defined perspective on what the modern woman wants and needs.

The launch collection’s starting point was the brand’s core solution & identity: a desire to make everyday feel like a special occasion, transforming daily dressing into a fun part of your day in a challenging life — without leaving you ill-equipped for reality.

“We do want to give her the winter essentials, elevated, thought about maybe a little bit differently. We want to tick her workwear box and give her something a bit more aligned to trend… We do want to try and bridge that international fashion gap that we feel like sometimes lags a bit in this market, where you've got to wait like, two or three seasons before you get a certain item.”

AYANA will have to walk a difficult line in maintaining relevance alongside brand authenticity. Staying true to their positioning means choosing raw denim, 100% cotton, and better meltons and melanges than comparable brands, but it also means keeping prices on target (so no genuine leather yet) and keeping styles grounded in the present.

“We're not saying that we’re going to be like fast fashion and we want to, like, turn something on super quick. We're definitely not going after like youth or trend fashion, if I can put it that way. But if the hottest coat is the scarf coat, then we want to have the scarf coat; we don't want to wait until it's reached mass international level before we put it in.“

The make-or-break question of price was asked and answered: Expect a handful of pricier pieces to hit the R600-R1000 range, like a black cinched PU blazer with asymmetrical hem and a large scale grey cheetah print full length melton coat; but most of the collection consists of pieces between R200 and R500, like soft suiting in retro-classic cuts, barrel leg raw denim, and the bags, shoes & underwear set to join the launch collection in stores in a few weeks.

Fit, painstakingly developed, will be tested in fitting rooms next weekend. “We've got two very passionate product developers, QAs who are quite hectic about developing the fit. We tried [things] on all the girls in the team.“ Consumers should expect fit that prioritises ease and may need to size down from their typical retail sizing.

The Big Question

We’ve gone around in circles on this one for years: Do South African consumers actually have style as conservative as their shopping data would suggest, or do they simply settle for what’s available among the market’s conservative options?

On one side of the aisle, an influential handful of mainstream retailers with reach and dominance say, ‘based on what you’ve bought before, the data says you won’t buy anything different.’ On the other side are the consumers whose anecdotal feedback has long been a chorus cry of boredom: ‘if you give us more interesting fashion we can afford, we will.‘

AYANA is a bet on the latter, a bet that there are more than just a handful of fashion enthusiasts hungry for novelty, relevance and boldness in their fashion purchases. The local success of platforms like SHEIN — driven by style availability & variety as much as price — suggests its not only the right call for re-shoring those shoppers, but also for unlocking new spend with other consumers who are also dissatisfied with the styles and/or prices in their local mall.

All images supplied: Ayana

I’d love to hear your thoughts and first impressions of the brand, so hit reply and share! If you have questions, send those through too; they answer might be something that didn’t make the edit, or something I can find out at the preview tonight — follow along on @thefashionoperator to take a peek at the collection.

With thanks,
Modupe