10 Feb 2019

Youthful entreprenuer, Ms Onneile Motswidinyane, 29, of Kanye has managed to turn her passion and talent into a lucrative and marketable business.

In an interview with the founder of Anelmas hat and facinate company, Ms Motswidinyane explained that she was driven by the love of making ends meet through business.

The business which specialises in making fashionable, classic and remarkably wide range of women’s headwear started in 2015.

She designs and makes different types, sizes, colours and shapes of hats which are normally based on her customers preferences and the occassion.

She revealed that most of her customers wanted hats for church, weddings, bridal parties, work and even for funerals.

“I deal with people of different classes, personalities and budgets, so I make sure they are all covered," she said.

Ms Motswidinyane stated that patience and devotion when dealing with her clients gave them options of what would look and work best with their outfits and budgets.

“The excitment of imagining how classic and stunning the end product will look matches my anticipation of creating remakable and unique hats wear,”she said.

Ms Motswidinyane references her churchmates from Old Apostolic Church for boosting and supporting her business because they are her regular clients.

The founder of Anelmas said she was proud of her business because it was making a mark, and she was proud to be a hat designer of class and dress some top local politicians which she labled as a big achievement.

She stated that most of her customers were based in Gaborone, Kanye and surrounding areas. She noted that her business was doing well in the market and has alredy started reaping from her hard work and slepless nights.

She said she has achieved a lot from her business, highlighting that she bought a car to help her run the business smothly.

“My business still operates from home and that means my expenses are minimal and my profits go directly into my savings,” she said.

She said she occassionaly engages four workers whenever she had big tenders that she could not manage alone.

Looking back, Ms Motswidinyane credits her breakthrough to her mother because she introduced the business idea to her.

She said she approached the gender affairs department for funding so that she could take her business to another level and was granted P90 000 in May 2018.

The young entrepreneur noted that she won position one at the just ended national women exposition under the arts and culture category in Gaborone.

“I couldn’t hold my excitment after getting position one countrywide, winning is an experience, it gave me hope and strength to look forward. It is through hard work, devotion and support from the community that my business managed to come to life,” she said. ENDS