After leaving his role as Creative Director of Indalo Décor, a business he co-founded in 2013, Inga Gubeka has succeeded in making a name for himself in the international design industry. He started and established a luxury leather goods brand, Inga Atelier that fuses functionality with practicality.
The luxury brand caters to the upper end of the market, with the collection including backpacks, clutches, tote and laptop bags, and more. Inga Atelier sources its leather from one of the biggest leather tanning companies in Ethiopia.
Gubeka made the lists of both the Forbes Africa 30 Under 30, and the Forbes (USA) Top 5 accessories designers in Africa in 2016. More impressively, Glenfiddich named a premium single malt whisky, worth R80 000 a bottle, after Gubeka, who designed the bottle in 2015.
Gubeka comments on adopting an eco-friendly approach in a Glamour SA Q&A: “Sustainable design is the future. The world is shifting in that direction, so it was very important for us to get involved in this environmentally-conscious movement at an early stage. Sustainable design is going to be around for a long time, as you may have seen, there are now new ways of growing leather without having to kill animals.”
Gubeka is, according to Forbes, one of Africa’s most promising young entrepreneurs.
