Dimpho Mashile, co-founder of Kgopelo, discusses how her brand blends indigenous African knowledge with modern technology within a beauty industry that has historically excluded Black women. This Q&A reveals Kgopelo’s approach to competing in the industry, its origins, challenges, and emphasis on storytelling, sustainability, and community. In such a competitive sector, the brand stands out by merging art, tradition, and personal connection, reflecting an admirable commitment to representation and innovation in African beauty.
Thembeka Heidi Sincuba: Can you tell us a bit about how Kgopelo started—its origins and makeup?
Dimpho Mashile: Sure. We started as a content platform under the name Kganyo, which, in Sepedi, means “light” or “to bring light to.” The name was very much centered around our views of not seeing enough black women in mainstream media, particularly when it came to beauty. The fact that we did not form part of what was understood to be conventional or standard beauty. While we understood the importance of visibility, we were also very adamant about being heard and not just being seen.
And so my sister was a beauty content creator under the moniker, The Black Beauty Activist. Um, and she would share a lot of educational content around, um, which makeup works best for darker skin tones, which hair products are in or out, um, styles, uh, general personal care, and wellness. This was between 2017 to 2019. By 2020, so shortly after lockdown, we’d been getting, um, a lot of questions from her growing community […] particularly with regards to product. [People were saying] if you guys are saying this sunscreen might not necessarily be best […] for my skin [with] stubborn hyperpigmentation or my more oily skin, which are concerns that are more common or prevalent in darker skin tones, What are your recommendations or suggestions? And just also because of the crazy amounts of money we were spending ourselves in your Dischems or Clicks. We then decided, okay, let’s take a shot at creating a product.
THS: What I find really interesting is how you’ve blended indigenous African knowledge with modern technology. How do you ensure that your products stay true to this heritage while also staying innovative?
DM: A lot of it stems from being open and curious. I think we’re really lucky as a country and as a continent to have such a vast biome of […] plant diversity, the fauna and flora. We didn’t have formal science backgrounds—my sister studied psychology, and I come from a tech background—[…] but we partnered with chemists and contract manufacturers to help us with research and development. We brought to them the botanicals we were interested in exploring, of which the first one was impepho, and our knowledge around it was very anecdotal. […] We have living archives that are our grandmothers, people in the communities who might not necessarily be able to decompose the chemical understanding of the plant, but who can give incredible anecdotal knowledge […] In South African traditional practice […] it holds […] very high importance, but it, even just as a plant, has incredible medicinal and healing properties often used for wounds. So then we decided […] there are so many different species of impepho in our country and very few are known or recognized. So, yeah, we experimented a bit with, I think it was three or four different kinds of impepho oils. And so we got the right blend or mix and then that was put into our first range, which is called Collection Immortal. Immortal is just another English word for impepho or helichrysum as it’s known.
THS: As a co-founder, what are some of the challenges—particularly unexpected ones—that you’ve faced in building and scaling the business, and how did you overcome them?
DM: I think there’s a lot of operational challenges and just in terms of a teething phase. Wwe are not even a year into our business in terms of the retail of products. We’ve been in research and development for a while, but we only launched officially on our e-commerce platform last year, November. . There’s a lot of learning about planning, improving operations, and showing ourselves grace […] You’re literally just starting out. You’re gonna make mistakes. I think there are a lot of stories […] of people who have achieved the scale part. But what I am learning is in this business, you have to do the unscalable first.
Personal care is exactly that. It’s deeply personal. At Kgopelo, we don’t say you shop with us, we say you take us home. We want to live in your bathroom cabinet, be the product your child remembers from your dressing table. To achieve that, we go door to door. One of my favorite things is to visit eSociety[…]—when abomama are having their kitchen parties I go in and pitch because there’s nothing more powerful than the voice of another woman. No sponsored post can replace that.
THS: Looking ahead, what are Kgopelo’s goals for product expansion and market reach? Are there any specific milestones you’re aiming for?
DM: I think if there is one thing that I absolutely dream of is getting more deeply entrenched in […] our value chain. I think our how is absolutely going to reflect our why as we grow. I say that because […] [of] our desire to get closer to all the communities that aid in creating our final product, whether it be glass blowers who help us finally design very interesting, unique expressions of our bottles, the artists that we build relationships with […] in assisting us to tell stories, the people who will be growing all the botanicals that we plan to expand on.
And keep the value chain as local as possible because we are interested in […] contributing and growing the economy of this country and this continent. […] I think right now […] more than 85-90% of what consumers take home is made on the continent and I’m really proud of that. To say that like we print our stuff here. We make our product here. Our boxes are made here. It really really matters to us because I think you cannot have the audacity to be concerned about […] economic wellbeing or the growth of the GDP and yet you open up your cupboard or your fridge or your bathroom cabinets and nothing in any of those areas is made on this continent. We’re excited about exploring intra-African trade and policy development to support this vision. We want Kgopelo to be a global product, made by Africans—global Africans with a story about who was empowered and how it was crafted.
THS: Kgopelo is essentially a family business. Balancing personal relationships and professional roles can be challenging. How do you manage this balance?
DM: […] I think we were all just really lucky in the sense that I think the vision is really clear and everybody is quite committed to the vision. What I have found most exciting for me is, we often speak of creating futures, you know, creating tomorrows. And that is always the basis of what the younger generation’s life will look like. But for me, my parents recently retired and have been significant in just assisting to grow and shape the business.
And the sort of alternate futures that I’ve seen is for them because I watch people who gave up so much for us to even […] dare to have such a dream.They retire different to what their parents did. You know what I mean? They are retiring into their own children’s dream. :
When I asked Dimpho if she had any words of advice for budding entrepreneurs, she suggested starting small, embracing imperfections, and trusting your journey. As a business owner, she seems incredibly curious and open to inspiration, and appreciates the skills others bring to her business. This bodes exceptionally well for Kgopelo, a reasonably ethical beauty brand that is special because it’s about much more than beauty, which always fades—it’s also about finding the beautiful balance between personal principles and audacious ambition.
Shop Kgopelo here.
