One of his customers was a flashy hairdresser who always wore a cowboy hat and drove a top-of-the-range left-hand-drive limousine. “He liked me because I was curious about his business and eager to learn,”says Makhatho, recalling how the man gave him his first break and employed him as a part-time trainee shampooist in his salon. Makhatho went on to qualify as a professional hairdresser. In 1982, with R7 000 in the bank, he decided to leave Blackwave and go it alone in Soweto, but failed to build a clientele and was soon forced to ask for his job back. “I had been over-ambitious and made a mistake of not planning properly, ”says Makhatho. A year later he was on the road, distributing hair-care products and bed linen in townships in the Free State, Northern Cape and Lesotho. “I travelled thousands of kilometers every week and the business was doing well. I quit my job again and opened a salon in Qwaqwa.”

In four years he opened six more salons. But rapid growth made it difficult to control the operation and the sales people. “I couldn’t manage the business from a distance, so I had to close the branches and go back to the original salon. I had, however, accumulated R300 000 in two years. “The experience taught him that distributing hair-care products from a main centre would be easier to control and manage. The Jabula Cosmetic Centre in Qwaqwa opened in May 1991 and four others followed. There were over 3 000 different stock lines, which meant the business needed more storage space and more sophisticated planning, management and control systems.