When Katlego Mashilane lost his job as an electrician in 2015, he never imagined that the setback would spark a journey that would take him from the streets of downtown Johannesburg to one of the worlds biggest jewellery trade exhibitions in New York.
Mashilane, who hails from Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga, founded Beadz by Flex in 2015 after identifying a unique opportunity in Maboneng, Joburgs bustling tourism hub.
There was an influx of tourists in Maboneng, and I decided to take advantage of that I knew what type of products tourists liked, he said.
