Business
Nairobi label Zuri Atelier closed a $4 million round to scale its leather workshop. Here’s what the money buys.
The Nairobi label's Series A pays for a bigger dye yard, ten new tanning apprenticeships and a distribution push into three new markets.
by Front Row Staff
Zuri Atelier has closed a $4 million Series A, the Nairobi leather label's first outside funding since its founder started cutting bags on a kitchen table in 2019.
The round, led by a pan-African consumer fund with participation from two returning angels, values the company at a level founder Amara Wanjiku declined to disclose. What she would discuss is where the money goes: a doubled dye yard, ten new tanning apprenticeships drawn from the same Nairobi neighborhood where the label started, and a distribution push into Lagos, Accra and Kigali.
“We turned down wholesale terms for three years because they wanted volume before they wanted craft,” Wanjiku said. “This round lets us grow without making that trade.”
The bet mirrors a pattern across the continent's leather and textile workshops this year: investors chasing East African manufacturing capacity, but only where the founder has already proven the craft holds up at scale.
