The SpaZa Origin Story: How a Fabric Dish Cover Changed Everything
It All Started With a Lappie
A lot of good stories start in kitchens — ours is one of them.
One day, while wiping kitchen counters, I found myself thinking:
“I need a good cloth. Like the ones mom has. Grandma made them… I should make them. They’d be a great home-based job creation project. I wonder if I can get cotton yarn?”
This is how ideas come to me. They pop into my head while I’m dreamily carrying out menial tasks — and then begins a whole chain of difficult ones.
Before I know it, I’m sourcing cotton yarn, deciphering my grandmother’s handwritten pattern, finding the right knitters, packaging it all up, and coming up with a name.
(Nitwit Cloths didn’t go down too well.)
Eventually, I gathered the courage to sell my not-so-cool kitchen cloths at the very cool City Bowl Market in Cape Town. Markets are a great way to learn what’s wrong with your ideas.
- Not everyone in South Africa cleans their own kitchen.
- If they do, they don’t need a new cloth every week.
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“Nit” is not a great word to have in your brand name.
The other truth about markets is that you meet your customers — and they often have better ideas. After one of my practiced pitches, a woman looked at me and said,
“Oh, it’s just a posh lappie!” And there it was — the Posh South African Lappie.
From Lappie to Lifestyle
I started building on the cloth to create more eco-friendly kitchen products. I carved my own printing stamps to create a domestic-friendly textile printing process.
Our home became a production studio — tea towels, oven mitts, shoppers, small travel pouches, and huge cushions — with me doing the entire process.
I realised that selling directly to customers made the most sense, so I turned our garage into a weekend shop.
That’s how the name SpaZa was born — a nod to home-based stores in South African townships.
We also launched our first online store and applied to show at Design Indaba in 2012. They liked the concept but asked me to come back with something less crafty and more design-focused.
The First Public Debut of the Fabric Dish Cover
We’ve always used tea towels to cover dishes at home, but one day, while heading to a friend’s house with a salad, I wished the cover would stay put.
I never bought plastic wrap — it seemed wasteful, and I didn’t like how food sweated underneath.
So, the next morning, I started cutting circles and experimenting with elastic.
I had my doubts that anyone would buy into the fabric food cover concept, but at Design Indaba, I put a few out on the trade-only day just to gauge the response.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t land any big retail orders — but to my surprise, every woman who had ever served a salad wanted one.
I stayed up all night making as many as I could for the next day, which was open to the public.
I took a taxi to the show so I could snip threads and tie swing tags en route. Petro, our au pair (and a costume designer), jumped in to help sew and delivered fresh batches through the marshalling yard fence.
I hadn’t even worked out the pricing when the crowd started shouting out suggestions — and within minutes, I’d sold out.
Growing the Brand
We grew organically — from our garage to The Watershed at the V&A Waterfront.
Opening a store there in 2014 gave us access to an international customer and consistent cash flow, providing ongoing work for our producers.
Eventually, we listed on Etsy and began mailing orders from Cape Town internationally.
I crossed my fingers as I waited in line at the post office.
It took many years of packaging design, system setups, and stockpiling inventory — but in 2018, we became an international South African brand with the launched of our US order fulfilment warehouse in New Jersey USA.
It’s Because of You
As I write this, I am full of pride and gratitude.
It has been such an incredible adventure — carried forward by our customers.
An idea was introduced to a few like-minded people, who gave me the encouragement and support to take it to more people — who again appreciated the beauty and function that our products brought to everyday life.
This, in turn, allowed me to employ and empower others. And so we grow. It really is all because of you.