Dea Rene: Learning has no age

Walking on stage with two bags full of her products, Dea captured the attention of everyone with her refreshing enthusiasm and determination. Living alone, Dea is a proud mother of four children and twelve grand-children. However, she prefers being self-sufficient and catering for her own self. Hence, she resorted to the production and sale of clothes and bags to spend her time as well as earn a living. Previously, she was a regular worker in a factory, where she accumulated years of experience with sewing and manufacturing textile products. It has now been 15 years since she left her factory job and embarked on a journey of creating her own mini-textile business. She started with sewing light clothes, then moved on to making bags and finally started stitching jackets. In fact, the started her presentation by sharing a sturdy winter jacket that she stitched, impressing the Judges with the quality of the product. The amount of hard work that Dea had to invest is visible since the product has a very professional finish and does not look hand-stitched.

Dea shares that she had never learnt production of bags during her time in the factory. It was a skill that she developed on her own during multiple trials, starting with sewing small bags. Dea’s main motivation is not the profits of the business, but to help people in general, hence her goods are usually at low prices to ensure that everyone can afford them. She has a working space at Gallerie Evershine in Rose-Hill, where she displays her goods on Fridays and Saturdays. Similarly, she has a stall at the Quatre Bornes Fair. In search of her products, she receives customers at her home too. When it comes to designing and the purchase of raw materials, she has no fixed place of purchase. As she shares, in her business, one must buy materials from wherever possible, or in Dea’s own words, “Kot gagner, bizin aster.” She describes walking down the streets of Port-Louis, buying materials that stand out to her, for instance she buys a lot of printed clothes whose designs appear appealing. Working alone, she depends on no one, but herself to advance her business and has her own machine, which she bought with her savings at the start of her business.

One of her best-selling items is a “viré-déviré bag”, which can be used on both sides, swapping the design by just inverting the bag. Most of her creations, including the bag, match up to ones in vogue today, but the striking part is that Dea comes up with all the designs on her own. She manufactures things that are hot on sale, with limited stocks, sold at ridiculously high prices on the internet, within her home. And, the end-product has such a clean finish, that it seems to have been made in a professional firm. Upon being probed, Dea admitted being shocked herself, when her grandchildren showed her pictures of the same on the internet. As she jokes, “Did I copy them, or did they copy me?” Not only bags, but she also makes pencil cases, or even T-shirts and jackets with the same style, that can be reversed and used. Fascinated with her creativity, the Judges wanted to know the inspiration behind Dea’s products to which she replied that an idea can strike her at any time. But, it mostly happens that when she is sleeping, a design crops up in her brain, and she immediately wakes up and translates that into a rough sketch. As she shares in her mother tongue, creole, “Mo pas dormi, mo penser.”

While some of her designs are due her creativity, others are inspired from real-life experiences. For instance, the sturdy jacket which she decided to hand-stitch from scratch was an idea triggered by an experience. In the past, Dea used to witness her son travelling to work in cold, windy, and often rainy winter mornings. She then designed and developed the jacket for her son, driven by her maternal instincts of protecting her children. Hence, with an initial aim to help her son, the waterproof and windproof jacket saw light on the commercial front too. However, Dea does not only sell pre-made goods, she also takes personal orders from customers. Hence, when customers approach her for a customizable order, she is exposed to the designs that are currently in vogue and that inspires the creation of other goods for sale. Dea also revels in the fact that all her products are very well sold, such that the samples presented were last ones of their kind. Since her products are very durable, with a clean finish, her customers are often smitten by her work and spread the word with other, hence extending the visibility of her products and attracting more customers.

On the financial aspect, Dea notes the prices of all raw materials in a copybook, which she compares with the selling prices of products to hence deduce any profits made. While she does reap in profits that help run the house, and it is a good form of earning, there is no guaranteed spot for displaying and selling her products. She must keep moving from fair to fair in search of clients. Even though she sells a few from her house, it is only in situations where clients have special accommodations or are people in the neighborhood- it is not a fixed place of sale on a daily basis. Additionally, while she can stitch five medium sized handbags in a day and a maximum of two days to make a jacket, she’s the only one working and cannot produce on a large scale. However, she questions whether a nomadic business is a boon in disguise for her, where there is less sales’ pressure on her, and she sells whatever she has and can.

In the long run, Dea hopes to expand her business by hopefully hiring a few people to work with her. The Judges suggested soliciting the help of her grandchildren to create a social media page, where she can extend the reach of her products. Additionally, given that her work is so unique, she could create a brand of her own products, and display them on online selling sites such as Ebay or Amazon, in the process attracting a customer pool from abroad. Above all, the resilience, talent and hard work of Dea Rene was so inspiring that she is a living example of the adage, “Success has no age limit.”