EXCLUSIVE: Industrie Africa Expands Into B2B With Launch of Retail Consultancy

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6 days ago

PARIS — As it celebrates its fifth anniversary, Industrie Africa is expanding into the business-to-business segment with the launch of a retail consultancy for the luxury hospitality industry, paving the ground for a funding round next year.
The fashion e-commerce platform's Select service is debuting with SoLA, short for Society of Luxury Artisanship, a concept store on Zanzibar's Bawe Island that carries designer labels from throughout Africa and beyond.
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Nisha Kanabar, founder and chief executive officer of Industrie Africa, saw a white space in the hospitality sector.
'While e-commerce is a very fundamental opportunity that enables access, I think it can be challenging as a channel to rely on. So for me, it was about how can we scale the connection of our designers to the customer that they're trying to reach?' she told WWD.
'Select is a special initiative in that it strives to embed Africa's design, fashion and lifestyle narratives into these spaces that already have existing emotional connections with consumers, and travel is a huge part of that. It turns product discovery into treasure or into collectibles, so it develops a further emotional connection with the designer than would exist otherwise through e-commerce,' she said.
To mark their flagship project, Industrie Africa and SoLA on Friday released the first drop of an exclusive collaboration with Tongoro, the Senegalese label whose fans include Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.
The range of limited-edition resortwear, designed specifically for the Zanzibar location, went on sale simultaneously at the SoLA store and online globally on industrieafrica.com, marking the first in a series of collaborations between brands and partner properties.
The Bawe Island resort, owned by the Karimjee Group conglomerate and operated by luxury hospitality group The Cocoon Collection, was named 'Best Hospitality Newcomer Worldwide 2025' by German luxury travel magazine Connoisseur Circle.
Industrie Africa is working on a second SoLA location in Zanzibar, and in talks for further properties in the Serengeti region. Kanabar sees a rich seam of opportunity.
'Many high-end African properties — this is something we've realized — still think of retail in quite a limited way. Even the most beautiful, grandest properties will still look at their retail avenues as an afterthought,' she remarked.
Industrie Africa offers a personalized approach, with introductions not limited to the 60-plus brands represented on its online platform. 'We're actually working with brands that perhaps the e-commerce model doesn't necessarily fit for,' she said.
Each selection is tailored to the geography, guest profile, brand ethos and goals of the property.
'Provenance and artisanship serve as two really key pillars for us, and understanding how the guest interacts with the geography or the locality of a particular [property] is important in defining what that narrative might be,' the executive explained.
'It's something that we realized also aligns with macro trends in the hospitality sector, which is currently thriving despite the global economy. We realize that travelers are looking for cultural depth in their experiences. They're looking for more context, and I believe that African design really remains underutilized in that equation,' she said.
While Kanabar described Industrie Africa as a hybrid, combining the curatorial viewpoint of a luxury e-commerce platform with the agility of a marketplace model, the physical retail locations will carry their own stock.
'That's a really important part of respecting a brand's point of view and their success, as you would respect that of a brand from anywhere else in the world,' she said.
Select offers a variety of services ranging from seasonal advisory to full retail concept.
'Each engagement will be very site-specific and not copy-pasted or duplicated. And then, of course, there might be additional guest activations or capsule collaborations, or even private label. We're very flexible,' Kanabar said. 'It really depends on how deep a property wants to go in transforming their retail strategy.'
Brands do not pay to participate in the program, ensuring an independent curation process. The items selected by Industrie Africa are identified by a special label, and customers will be encouraged to visit the website, maximizing opportunities for synergy.
Founded in 2018 as a portal for discovering African designers, Industrie Africa launched e-commerce in 2020 and ships to 57 countries, though 80 percent of orders come from the U.S.
Kanabar, who is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, declined to disclose revenues for the privately held business, but is preparing to welcome outside investors.
'As we expand this business model a little deeper into the B2B realm, and see where it could go and what it could be, for me, 2026 is a very likely timeframe for raising investments, as by then, we probably would have gotten an adequate amount of proof of concept, just like we did for e-commerce,' she said. 'The market is ever-evolving. We're trying to evolve with that market.'
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