Part 1: Our Andsara Story
People are always naturally curious as to how others come up with their business ideas and get them off the ground – we thought it would be fun to share our story with you, in chapters – to bring you along on the journey of how Andsara came about…
PART 1 – FRIENDSHIP
It all started way back in 1994 – no kidding! We became friends in our grade 5 class (standard 3, back then) at Howick Prep – a friendship cemented in the branches of a playground tree, where we’d hang our with the rest of our motley crew during break time. After that we both went to the same high school, and then university, maintaining our friendship over the years, and meeting up once again in London where we lived together for a while in a house-share before moving in with our now-husbands respectively. Back in SA a few years later, we were bridesmaids at each others weddings, and despite never having lived in the same area since our London days, we made sure to see each other as often as possible, with Andreas visits up to Gauteng, and while Sarah was down in KZN visiting her family.
During one of these very catch ups, in January 2018 – the seed was planted. Sarah had visited India recently for another friends wedding, and couldn’t get her mind off the amazing textiles she’d come across. After sharing this with Andrea, the two decided that their complimentary skills would actually be a great way to bring this business idea to life. If you’ve been following us since the beginning (in which case you are probably a close friend of family member – thanks for the support!) you’ll probably remember that we actually kicked this business off with a completely different name! We’d initially registered the business using a combination of our two names – Andsara – but for some other reasons had decided to use Rumah as our trading name. Right before launching our online shop in 2019 we switched back to Andsara because Rumah just didnt feel quite right and both of us are SO glad that we did!
Once the decision to forge ahead had been made, we booked tickets to India for sometime in April of the same year, and with a list of ideas and people that we wanted to visit in hand, we braved the Indian summer to find the suppliers we now partner with today.
