JENDAYA is being built as the Farfetch meets Moda Operandi and Threadstyling for continental Africa and shoppers from all over the globe. A luxury fashion platform listing both African & Western brands, by partnering with brands and boutiques from around the world to list items for sale and made-to-order with allocated personal stylists added to enhance the online shopping experience.
They have onboarded a wide range of luxury brands such as Dior, Mach & Mach, Cult Gaia, Orange Culture, Linda Farrow, Christie Brown, Aaks, and Rich Mnisi – (90+ brands in total to begin with) and will be launching their e-commerce pilot in Q1 2021 with selected shoppers across the UK, US, Nigeria, and Ghana to exclusively try out the platform first.
In the meantime, all customers can sign up to receive a discount from their first shop when the platform is live for all and to be pre-allocated to a personal stylist!
Jendaya launched their editorial only platform in March 2020 with vibrant and alluring content, this has been the star of their offering thus far as it has allowed them to feature in the likes of Business of Fashion, the Latin American Fashion Summit and has commanded the attention of industry veterans. When they set out to create their content offering (part 1 of their pilot business) they drew inspiration from industry pioneer Net-a-Porter. It was important to set the tone that great content is equally as important, as a prelude to engaging shoppable content. Furthermore, the objective of content is always to educate, inform, tastemake, style and inspire: something the platform seems to be doing very well.
Sustainability is also at the heart of the JENDAYA ethos. The commitment to made-to-order allows many African premia to luxury brands to partake in the platform as it aligns with their production cycle, which differs from the mass-produced and “at scale” ready to wear machine common in the West. This was the center of discussion in their Quartz Africa feature in September. Jendaya has also officially become part of the Positive Luxury body and will be rolling out some initiatives and partnerships under this umbrella.
Further to this, they are working on providing business friendly debt solutions to the African brands that will be on board the platform, analyzing their sales data as a means of offering development loans. Not only this but to enhance the growth and development of the African fashion and design landscape they are also partnering with TRIBU, powered by LAFS to grant easy access to members of the African fashion and design community unto the platform which in short is a Business of Fashion meets Linkedin – enabling members to network, raise funds, be educated and hire/be hired and more.
2021 will prove promising for JENDAYA as they work on collaborations and plan to roll out the e-commerce in Q1.
