Meet Team Skinny laMinx #3

If you’ve been following this Meet The Team series of posts, you might be surprised at how many of us there are at Skinny laMinx. Even I’m taken aback, now and again! But there’s a lot to do around here, what with our Bree St shop, two online shops, a local and international wholesale business, and all communications and design done in-house.

Today, as part of our Meet the Team series, you get to meet our production team – those hard-working gals who manage our printers, the CMT processes, stock levels and wholesale orders. It’s behind-the-scenes work, but today the spotlight is on these superstars!

Belinda wowed us this time last year when she came back from her January wedding, coming to work every day in spectacular traditional post-wedding outfits, befitting her new status as a mfazi. We asked for a repeat performance for this team photo, which is why she looks so spiffy here. Scroll to the end to see pics I took of Belinda’s traditional post-wedding outfits in 2014. B helps Maleeka with wholesale orders, and she handles all the packaging of our products too. So when you unwrap something you bought from us and start removing the label or sticker, think of Belinda’s calm, smiling face, ‘cos she’s the one who attached it in the first place.

Sarah has a juggling job – and that doesn’t even include juggling the demands of her two kids! She juggles giant rolls of fabric, as she plans our basecloth orders, looks into the future to plot our print runs, keeps an eye on levels in our fabric store, and sweet-talks our printers into sticking to schedule. It’s no simple task, but she’s a production whizz, and remains calm under pressure.

Maleeka has been with Skinny laMinx for a long, long time! She used to work in the Silk & Cotton Co. showroom in Greenpoint, and when we opened our store-within-a-store there, she became our shop manager too. These days, she manages our stock levels, wholesale orders and works with our cutting and seamstress crew to keep up the flow across all our sales channels. It’s a busy job, and you will seldom see Maleeka pause, except, occasionally, so do one of her trademark mighty mouse sneezes.

Now, for a hard-hitting question-and-answer session with the team:

Plus, plus, plus! Last year’s shweshwe fashion show from the newly-wed Belinda. Looking good, B!