For Engelina Lebo Monama, entrepreneurship did not begin with a business plan or a large investment. It began in childhood, surrounded by sewing machines, fabric cut-offs and the example of a father who taught her what confidence looked like.
Born and raised in Kingsway, Benoni, the 26-year-old founder of Isiphithiphithi Wears Fashion House and Isiphithiphithi Workwear comes from a family with a long history in clothing and design.
Her grandmother, Nomasondo, and mother, Josephine Monama, were seamstresses, while her paternal grandfather was a seamster who worked in Johannesburg.
Two of her aunts are now full-time seamstresses in Limpopo.
As a young girl, Lebo was naturally drawn to her mother’s sewing machine and the fabric around the house.
“I was always drawn to her machine, playing with it and playing with the fabric cut-offs around the house,” she said.
Her father, a taxi owner, died in 2006 when Lebo was six years old. Yet one childhood memory of him remains particularly vivid.
After she was bullied at school, her father decided to accompany her. They left home at about 05:45, made three deliveries before heading to school and eventually arrived at around 11:30.
Lebo remembers that he showed no fear.
“He knew what he was doing and he was confident,” she said, recalling how walking into school beside him made her feel like a princess.
That confidence would later help her take a leap of her own.
In 2016, while she was in matric, Lebo wrote in her diary that she wanted to own her own company within two years. Two years later, that company was registered.
She was 17.
She did not have formal business knowledge and did not even know exactly what the business would become. What she did have was a dream that eventually took the form of four printed caps.
The idea had come to her in a dream, which she believed was from God. Still, Lebo worried about what people would say about a young girl talking about Isiphithiphithi.
But she decided to start anyway.
“I didn’t have everything figured out. I just had to believe enough to take the first step.”
From those four caps, Isiphithiphithi has grown into a business that manufactures clothing and workwear and provides printing and clothing solutions to schools, corporates, choirs and organisations.
It has sold some 8 200 items and now supplies uniforms to four schools.
Passion is not enough
But the journey has not been as smooth as the finished products might suggest.
Lebo says entrepreneurship has cost her “sleep, time, friendships, comfort, energy and money.”
There have been late nights, sacrifices and periods when the journey felt lonely.
The hardest period came in 2025, when she questioned whether the dream would work. Financial, emotional and mental pressure forced her to confront the reality of trying to carry a growing business largely on her own.
Rather than seeing that period as a failure, Lebo says it taught her one of the most important lessons of entrepreneurship: passion is not enough.
“I learned that the business needs structure, not just passion. It needs systems, people and the right support around it,” she said.
She also learnt that growth does not always announce itself with a major breakthrough.
For her, one of the most meaningful moments came when she created a job for someone else and was able to pay them a salary.
That was when Lebo realised she had built something beyond an idea.
The Youth Employment Service programme later became another important part of her journey.
Lebo says YES came at a time when she was beginning to lose hope and gave her renewed confidence and access to opportunities.
She became a Top 35 Under 35 YES winner and exhibited her photography at venues including Cape Town International Airport and the Sandton Convention Centre. The programme also helped open the door for Isiphithiphithi to make clothing for Pizza Hut.
As the business grew, so did Lebo’s understanding of what she wanted it to represent.
Isiphithiphithi has expanded into uniforms, workwear, printing and photography, but she says expansion was never about becoming bigger simply for the sake of it.
Peace, purpose, meaning
“The vision was always bigger than four caps,” she said.
That vision also extends beyond her own success.
Through 25 Art Peace, Lebo works with young people in her community, helping them recognise their own potential.
“I didn’t create their light. I just brought a little spark to something that was already inside them.”
For Lebo, that sense of community is inseparable from her roots.
“Benoni raised me,” she said, crediting the people and small businesses around her with helping shape her entrepreneurial journey.
And perhaps that is why her definition of success has changed.
When she started, success meant building a big business and making money. Today, she says success is about peace, purpose and knowing that her work has meaning while creating opportunities for others.
Her advice to other young people is rooted in the reality of her own beginning: they do not need to have everything figured out before starting.
“I want young people to understand that their circumstances don’t have to become the size of their dreams,” she said.
“Leap. Start small if you have to, but start. Your dream does not need to look big in the beginning for it to become something big.”
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