How TFG’s big bet on making clothes at home is paying off
As the economy stagnates, unemployment increases and consumers buckle under the cost-of-living crisis, the retail group is bringing prices down by focusing on local manufacturing, having invested R1bn on rebuilding capacity in the sector. It’s not just buyers who are reaping the benefit; the communities around its five factories are thriving too
15 June 2023 - 05:03
An hour and a half outside Cape Town sits a town that represents ground zero for a bold new shift in South African fashion retail.
Caledon is known for its hot springs and farming businesses, surrounded as it is by barley, grain fields and wind turbines. Yet it is here that TFG — founded 98 years ago when American immigrant George Rosenthal opened his first clothing store on Joburg’s Pritchard Street — has thumbed its nose at the notion that running a fashion empire requires a string of offshore suppliers hawking bargain-basement clothes made in Asia...
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