10 years of providing quality designer gowns

Lavender Tales Bridal Boutique is a consultancy operating in Windhoek, known for its personal service, tranquil setting, and wide selection of designer gowns.

Emily Nikanor, founder of Lavender Tales, started her bridal shop in Swakopmund in a two-bedroom apartment, where she used one bedroom for designing and the living room for consultations. After moving to Windhoek in 2014, she continued her business from home and eventually found space in the city centre for a formal shop in 2016. By then, she had dressed over 300 brides.

Born in the small town of Oshikuku, Nikanor has created over 1 000 wedding dresses for brides from Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, Finland, Sweden, Germany and the USA. Lavender Tales currently has a team of six employees.

In attendance at the celebration were the keynote speaker, the founder of Karibbu Flowers, Lydia Jacobs, social influencers, business partners and media representatives.

Despite the challenges experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, Nikanor encouraged business owners to embrace setbacks, as they catapult one into greater experiences

“Lavender Tales’ biggest achievement so far is that we’re still standing despite many challenges, such as Covid-19 which made us close shop for almost two months,” said Nikanor.

She added that her main goal was to make every woman’s dream come true by providing her with the wedding dress of her choice. “I saw a gap when I got married 11 years ago and wanted to afford every bride the pleasurable experience of finding her dream dress,” she said.

She said that starting a business and growing it is not always an easy journey, but it all becomes worth it when you start to experience scaling in your business. As an entrepreneur her biggest lesson was trying to have as much control as possible over her products so that she could determine the delivery dates, quality, output and just the general process.

Also attendance were previous customers such as the business owner of Premium Wear, Nomvula Mapolombo-Mbwaluh. Mbwaluh stated that Emily and her team where professional and delivered way beyond her expectations. “Her team was professional, on time and made my wedding a dream come true. I still look in awe at my wedding pictures and the ease of not worrying about the most important thing, which was the dress for me,” she said.