Iconic designer Carrol Boyes, who died in August, has left a legacy for her two brothers, who have plans to attract younger customers by expanding into fashion.
Boyes started her business in 1989, selling her quirky designs of flatware and dining ware at a market in Cape Town. The business now has 25 stores in SA and two overseas warehouses, and the brand is sold in 15 David Jones stores and more than 130 other stockists in Australia.
Charles Boyes, who is now running the business with his brother John, said this week his late sister was "the most prolific designer that I've seen".
"Carrol's got a massive archive of drawings and design ideas that she left for us. In the last year, when she got sick, she said to me, 'Charles, I'm going to produce enough articles that you don't have to think about design for the next five years.'
"If you had to walk into our archives now you can see all the 2020 stock, the 2021 stock that we're going to be launching. So we've done a complete range for the next five years."
Charles and John have been part of the business since its early days. They say they will forge ahead with the company's growth plans.
This includes diversifying the product range to include cookware and small appliances such as kettles, toasters, coffee machines and blenders; and introducing bathroom towels, throws and bedding accessories.
"We decided that we were going to go into about seven to eight different categories that we knew would fit the brand very well," says Charles. Our motto has always been, 'we want to be the gift of choice', but now we want to change that to not only be the gift of choice but to own the home."
Charles says the new Carrol Boyes appliances will lend themselves to being on display in the home.
"A lot of Carrol Boyes's customers love displaying their products, which is exactly what we as a company want them to do. And those are the items like a toaster and a kettle that you leave out on your counter that go very well with your canisters and your bread bins and paper-towel holders.
"So we want to make the whole range complement each other, and that you haven't got that mismatch of products on your counter," Charles says.
In the third quarter of next year the company plans to launch a fashion accessory segment, a market in which it dabbled in the past but gradually abandoned because selling the fashion range in the same store as homeware products did not work.
The new range of handbags, watches, sunglasses and jewellery will launch under the brand Body Language, which will have dedicated standalone stores.
Body Language is one of the company's attempts to woo younger shoppers.
"It's the young South African that we want to migrate from fashion accessories to homeware as they get older and they create their own home. These days the young guys look at the product and maybe say, 'That's my mom's generation.'
"We need to make sure Carrol Boyes is relevant to all young South Africans. Young South Africans love beautiful stuff that goes on the body, it's a way that they express themselves, and we think that with watches, sunglasses and handbags we can penetrate the young market."
John says greater focus will be placed on Carrol Boyes's operations overseas.
"Our offshore business has not been a sizeable part of the business, so we'd like to grow that in all our jurisdictions. We want to grow in the US and in Europe far more aggressively and elsewhere in the world, be it Far East or Africa."
John says distribution to customers in Europe would be from the UK.
Charles says expansion into Australia has been "aggressive". "We've set up warehousing in Australia and we have also got an online presence so we've got a warehouse that we can pick and pack from and send directly to clients."
The brand's other foreign-based warehouse is in Atlanta, Georgia.
