Nairobi’s Zuri Atelier raises $4 million to scale leather

Zuri Atelier will open its first flagship store in Nairobi's Westlands district in October, the leather goods house's first owned retail space after five years of selling exclusively through wholesale partners and pop-ups.

The store, a 2,200-square-foot space on Church Road near the ABC Place complex, will be Zuri's first point of direct contact with customers in its home city, and follows a $4 million Series A round that is funding both the flagship and a tripling of workshop output at the brand's Ngong Road tannery. Until now, Zuri bags have been available in Nairobi only through a handful of multi-brand boutiques and at seasonal trunk shows, with most full-price sales happening through the brand's website and shipped from a single showroom attached to the workshop. The Westlands space is being built out with reclaimed timber shelving and a visible cutting bench near the entrance, a deliberate choice to bring the tannery's process into view of retail customers for the first time.

"Westlands is where our customer already is — she's just been buying us through someone else's shelf," said Brenda Wanjiru, Zuri's founder and creative director. "Owning the room means we control how the leather is presented, how the story of where it's tanned and cut gets told, and we keep the margin that used to go to a boutique markup. It also means we finally get to see who is buying the bags, instead of hearing about it secondhand from a stockist."

The flagship will carry Zuri's full ready-to-wear leather line alongside a made-to-order counter, where customers can select hides and hardware for bags built to specification, a service the brand has previously offered only to a small list of private clients. Wanjiru says a second store, in either Kampala or Kigali, is under consideration for 2027 depending on how the Westlands location performs through its first two quarters, with foot traffic and made-to-order conversion the two metrics she says will decide it.