Africa’s Leading Online Fashion Retailer Is Shutting Down

 

Industrie Africa, the continent’s leading online multi-brand fashion retailer, is closing down just five years after launch, highlighting the volatility of the current e-commerce model on a regional and global scale.

On April 30, the e-commerce platform founded by Tanzanian fashion entrepreneur Nisha Kanabar will transition into Industrie Africa Plus (IA+), an advisory firm that will collaborate with luxury hotels, cultural institutions, and premium retail hubs to showcase fashion from the continent in new physical locations, such as concept

stores, retail activations, and pop-ups. For the advisory’s first project, it launched a concept boutique on Bawe Island in Zanzibar, Tanzania, in partnership with the island’s luxury hotel.

Several roadblocks led to the e-tailer shutting its doors, including cross-border logistics, inconsistent tariff policies, and market volatility, according to Kanabar. US tariffs, in particular, were a significant setback when they came into effect last year. Many African countries, including South Africa, Algeria and Madagascar, were hit hard, with tariffs ranging between 15% and 50% (that was later revised and now ranges from 15% to 30%). The tariffs threatened the longevity of many businesses, including those on the African continent that have built a loyal fan base in the US.

For Industrie Africa, the US was a key market and accounted for approximately 80% of sales. “[Tariffs] heavily impacted our business,” says founder Kanabar, adding that the end of the de minimis loophole meant US consumers had to pay duties on their purchases, something they were not used to doing. “We saw an overnight shift in how the customer was shopping. Until that point, we were under the impression that we were toward a really positive trajectory.”

Kanabar also notes that the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which provided duty-free access to US consumers, had its challenges. According to Industrie Africa, those hurdles included varying compliance capacity and origin-rule complexities, while the act’s periodic renewals created an atmosphere of uncertainty that complicated long-term pricing and fulfilment strategies for exporters. “For African brands selling into the US market, this volatility — compounded by fluctuating freight rates and currency exposure — meant that the constraint was rarely demand or creativity, but execution at scale,” the company said.

Since its inception in 2018, Industrie Africa quickly became the go-to destination for global consumers eager to discover high-end African fashion brands. It stocked leading brands including Nigeria’s Lisa Folawiyo, Ghana’s Christie Brown, and Senegal’s Tongoro, and shipped to nearly 60 countries worldwide. The goal was to create a platform that rivaled the industry leaders of then, such as Net-a-Porter and Farfetch, while offering a curated selection of African designers and helping them gain a global footing.

“Success for me was responding to the market and filling gaps that needed to be filled,” says Kanabar. At the time of launch, demand for African fashion was soaring, but access to brands remained limited, with only a handful of designers shipping internationally or having wholesale partners abroad, she says. “I do feel like I achieved what I wanted to achieve in that we created a model that we can learn from and the industry can learn from.”

Credit: Vogue