Tribal Textiles Family Day 2019 from Tribal Textiles on Vimeo.

As always, the past few months have been super exciting here at Tribal and we wanted to share with you some of the many things that are ongoing! That involves pimping up our workshop, designing new lines, expanding Tribal Textiles abroad, celebrating creativity of local youth and doing a fair bit of bum shaking!

 

WALL ART

We love our workplace here in Mfuwe: this is such a joyful place, full of music and laughter from our team, where creativity, sustainability and gender equality are key.

Many of those who visited us in the past noticed (and took photos) of the chalk board in the sewing room, where we wrote our philosophy. We thought it was high time to share those believes even more proudly, to keep us working together, happy as a team and allow visitors to reflect on them.

So we did what we do best: we used vibrant hand-mixed colors and brushes and painted Tribal philosophy on a big wall in the workshop.

We left this (more difficult than expected) task to our new intern Jannis, a graphic design student specialized in wall arts. Using an ingenious method, he drew the words at night using a homemade projector to avoid distortion before painting them.

He also pimped up our Glass Recycling workshop wall with this statement that we love: “Time for Change, there is no planet b”. Food for thought…

FAMILY DAY 2019

Talking about food, Tribal Textiles celebrated Family Day early August. 25 chickens, 15kg steak, 50kg rice, 30 cabbages, 5kg onions, 10kg tomatoes, 600 soft drinks, 300 eggs and packs of biscuits is what it took to feed our Tribal family this year.

This is one of our favorite moment each year, where our team members bring their family to show their workplace, do a bit of arts and a lot of dancing, and above all share a big hearty meal.

We were honored to be joined by Royal Highness Chief Mnkhanya - the chief of the area where our workshop is located who came to show his appreciation for the employment Tribal Textiles gives in his Chiefdom. 

He was greeted by dancers from the Malaila Traditional Ceremony, held every year by the Kunda speaking people of Zambia.

The dancers performed a traditional dance called the Ndongwe dance, that involves both men and women, drumming and a lot of shaking!

We were so impressed with the dancers that we sponsored them for the Malaila festival later that month and offered to sponsor them with bright new printed tshirts. Which provided Chief Mnkhanya with the opportunity of a good joke, wondering out loud what they would be wearing below if they had only tops…

Overall, the day was a great success. Many new friends were made, old friends reunited and most importantly the hard work of our team members was celebrated. Can’t wait for Family Day 2020!!!

 Read all about it here or watch the video below:

Tribal Textiles Family Day 2019 from Tribal Textiles on Vimeo.

 

MEET PAUL & TOM, OUR TIRELESS GROUNDSMEN

When we reopened the workshop in March, we went into a painting frenzy and decided to paint all our buildings white! This has certainly kept our fantastic Groundsmen duo Paul and Tom busy: as one can imagine, it doesn’t take only one layer of paint to cover terracotta bricks!!! And those who visited know that we don’t have only one building here.

Men in the shadows, those two always work in pair and hold the fort during the rains when the workshop is closed. Paul began working with Tribal Textiles as a gardener in 2000 and Tom quickly joined in 2003. Their positive outlook and fantastic work ethic soon marked them out for promotion to Head Groundsmen and Storesmen.

Paul has 6 children and is proud that his only son Jeff also works with Tribal Textiles in our dispatch department. Tom has only 4 kids but a better balance between genders with a very equal 2 boys and 2 girls.

While Tom can’t say no to a good football game, we think Paul secretly likes being in charge of the Tribal sound system, where he loves to mix up the Zambian tunes with his favourite – James Brown!

If you want to meet the rest of the Tribe, head here.

 

STUDENT PHOTO EXHIBITION

We believe in empowering our local community and are delighted to showcase the wonderful creative work of local pupils at tribe, the smaller shop we opened in 2017 near South Luangwa Park main entrance.

This photographic exhibition was produced by students of Mfuwe Day Secondary School. They are all members of the school’s Conservation Club and Camera Club, which is facilitated by Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust.

The Camera Club members wanted to share the joy and interest they have experienced in capturing images of wildlife, the environment and their community. These photos are a window into the very special world of South Luangwa as seen by the youth who live there.  

BIG APPLE WELCOMES TRIBAL TEXTILES!

As you might know, we sell our beautiful textiles directly to visitors in our shops in Zambia as well as in lodges throughout Eastern Africa (this is without mentioning our online shop of course).

But we also export them to stockists in over 20 countries. By far, our biggest export market is North America and we were thrilled to know that our beautiful textiles were so nicely represented in two significant booths at NY NOW tradeshow this year!

Swahili Imports and Wander Handmade are both long time wholesalers of artisans’ crafts from all around the world. Carefully curating a different selection of our styles (animals, contemporary African…), those two wonderful long-time partners should be your first point of contact if you want to place a small trial order within USA / Canada directly shipped from there.

Contact sales @ tribaltextiles.co.zm for details.

 

WILD LINES IN PROGRESS

This time of year, our workshop is usually busy fuming with ideas  of new designs to exhibit at ZADS (Zambian Arts and Design Show) in November, before releasing them in our shops and for wholesale.

This year, we wanted to create a collection at a lower price point and Jen and Cece came up with this brilliant new animal range. These designs are made up of one continuous line of starching, forming the shape of various animals.

Contact sales @ tribaltextiles.co.zm for prices and wholesale enquiries.

 

That’s all for now from the Tribal team… and don’t forget to keep it shaking!

THE TRIBAL DRUM

JULY 2017

It’s been an exciting couple of months at Tribal and we’ve got lots of news to share.

It’s been an exciting couple of months at Tribal and we’ve got lots of news to share. In our last newsletter, we were hard at work with our biggest export order yet. We’re extremely proud to say that we managed to complete and send off to the US, in record time, over one and a half tonnes of beautiful Tribal Textiles cushion covers!

The experience was a huge learning curve for us all and our target wouldn’t have been achieved without incredible team efforts. We are extremely grateful to our staff for their dedication and look forward to producing more bumper sized orders in the future! 

In September last year we attended our very first tradeshow (the Trade + Impact summit) held in Morocco. This event introduced us to a lot of great contacts and even led to the big order to the US at the beginning of the season.

This year, we decided to go bigger: we’re going to New York in August. Yes, the Big Apple! We will attend NY NOW - one of the biggest tradeshows in interior decoration - in their Artisan Resource section, an area of the show that showcases artisan groups from all over the world. We will fill our bags with as many beautiful Tribal samples as possible, ready to show them to the thousands of attendees and buyers.

Our founder Gillie stopped by a few weeks ago and came up with an array of new contemporary designs for us to showcase there! We’ll definitely keep you posted with more news and pictures in upcoming newsletters but we can already say that she has been very inspired and productive!

We didn’t just stop at new designs. We also recently launched a new product: Tribal’s very own fabric storage pots! Like babushkas, they come in various sizes, colours and prints and you can stack them inside one another or fill them individually with anything you like – from plants to pens! We got really positive feedback about them on social media and are looking forward to seeing how sales will be in our shops.

 

Whilst it’s great to be busy with orders and shows on the International stage, we still love nothing more than seeing Tribal’s décor around camps and lodges in the South Luangwa valley.

Kafunta Safaris recently added a wonderful new tented camp to their portfolio – Three Rivers Camp. We hope you also love how stylish our screen-printed cushion covers look in their tents!

If you follow us on social media (which we hope you do), you probably know our latest great addition… we opened a café! That’s right, not only can you tour our workshop, browse for products in the shop or paint your own cushion covers during an Art Safari. Now you can also indulge in a delicious meal or simply enjoy a drink at The Courtyard Café.

 

Of course, we had to test out the café ourselves before opening it up to the public and we can confirm that the food prepared by the local legend Dorica is absolutely delicious! With tasty food and more beautiful textiles, we’re confident there’s more exciting news ahead and we’ll keep you updated in our next Tribal Drum.

All the best for now from the Tribal team!