When Karen Roos and her husband Koos Bekker bought a rundown Cape Dutch farm in the Franschhoek Valley in 2007, the plan was not to build one of South Africa's fastest-growing luxury e-commerce operations. It was to restore a piece of history. Eighteen years later, the history is intact and the business is something else entirely.
Roos, a journalist and editor who spent years in South African and international media before turning her attention to Babylonstoren, has built the estate into a high-end lifestyle brand that competes in the same online space as established national retailers, selling premium wines, baked goods, candles, soaps, linen, ceramics and bath products to customers across the country. Business intelligence platforms cited by MyBroadband now rank Babylonstoren among South Africa's top online shops, a notable position for a brand that started as a farm.
The progression makes more sense when you trace Roos's background. She worked as a journalist, served as fashion editor of Glamour in New York, and later edited Elle Decoration South Africa. She authored multiple books on decor and design. That editorial sensibility is woven into every corner of Babylonstoren's commercial identity, from the tightly controlled visual language of the estate itself to an online store that feels more like a well-produced lifestyle magazine than a conventional retail site. The brand image is deliberate and disciplined, and Roos is the person who built it.
