The Cape Town Entrepreneur Betting That A Homegrown Sports Brand Can Take On The Giants

Yaasir Jacobs started apparel manufacturer YSport over 12 years ago and, like many entrepreneurs, has suffered the highs and lows of the past decade, including Covid-19 and a struggling economy.

But there are still reasons to be optimistic, according to the Cape Town-based Jacobs, who started YSport out of necessity after his family lost houses and cars when his father’s electrical business went into liquidation and he had to start from scratch.

Always a keen soccer player and still in love with the game, he took to designing team kits and expanding into other forms of apparel.

“At first, I was just designing the kits and handing them over to people to manufacture, but they never quite came out the way I had designed them. Eventually I thought, ‘I need to figure out how to make these myself,’” Jacobs tells FORBES AFRICA.

“A friend helped me buy a vinyl cutter and my old football club gave me my first order. That was really how the business started, out of survival.

“Things were going quite well before Covid. We had started getting contracts with the South African Defence Force, making tracksuits and kits for the Navy and Air Force, and that became part of our bread and butter.”

YSport also supplied the Namibia Football Association with apparel, taking Jacobs’ business international.

He was about to sign a deal with then South African top-flight team Baroka FC before Covid ended that opportunity… and much of his work.

“The Defence Force work disappeared, sponsors stopped putting money into smaller teams and the bigger orders dried up,” he says.

Jacobs used his savings, initially intended to open a retail store in Cape Town, to keep paying his staff and the rent for the business.

“The dream of retail had to be put on hold, but it helped us survive,” he says.

A quick look at the kits of top-flight football teams in South Africa, and national sides across the continent, shows the dominance of major international apparel brands such as Umbro, adidas, Nike and Kappa. Jacobs hopes to change that.

“My big idea has always been to build an established South African sports brand,” he says.

“Why shouldn’t we one day go to the Olympics wearing our own sports brand, or have Bafana Bafana playing in a South African brand? We have the ability to make these products here.

“We spend so much money building international brands like Nike and adidas, but we also need to ask what we are doing to build our own.

“We manufacture only in South Africa and work with local suppliers. The money stays within the local economy and supports South African jobs.”