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          <span className="t-caption-upper">field notes</span>
          <h1 className="t-display-lg art-title">Meet Muna : Building Brand Infrastructure for Circular Fashion</h1>
          <div className="art-meta t-body-sm"><span>Natasha Ngundu</span><span className="art-dot"></span><span>November 10, 2025</span></div>
          <p className="art-role t-caption">| GTM &amp; Strategic Comms | Strategist | Art &amp; Collector engagement |</p>
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        <p className="t-body-md art-standfirst">Resale is commercially proven in the US and Europe. Consumer platforms and retailer programmes have made "pre-owned" mainstream through trust systems, logistics, and software that scale. By Rotation, Vestiaire Collective, eBay , The RealReal and Vinted lead that wave. Vinted grew revenue 61% to €596.3m in 2023 and posted its first annual profit, a clear validation of the model (Vinted, 2023; Sifted, 2024). The RealReal exited 2024 with double-digit growth as consignment stabilised (The RealReal Investor Update, 2024). eBay's Recommerce Report shows almost three in five consumers bought pre-loved in the past year, with Millennials and Gen Z leading frequency (eBay Recommerce Report, 2024).</p>
        <p className="t-body-md">In Africa, the story is different but equally active. Historically, secondhand meant hand-me-downs or fast fashion's unwanted overflow. Today, circular behaviour thrives through community networks and informal routes, which means it's under-measured by brands but very much present.</p>
        <p className="t-body-md">Muna Africa is building the brand-side infrastructure to meet this behaviour inside retail channels and turn it into loyalty and revenue. I worked with them via Thinkroom Consulting and E Squared Investment programme</p>

        <h2 className="t-display-md">What Muna does</h2>
        <figure className="artfig">
          <div className="artfig-frame"><image-slot id="art2-founders" placeholder="Co-Founders Esethu Cenga and Tshepo Bhengu"></image-slot></div>
          <figcaption className="t-caption">Co-Founders Esethu Cenga and Tshepo Bhengu</figcaption>
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        <p className="t-body-md">Muna embeds a resale flow directly inside a brand's site. Customers list earlier purchases in minutes. Items are verified. Listings syndicate to partner marketplaces. Payouts land as brand vouchers that bring shoppers back. The same rails recover value from returns, samples, deadstock, and excess, giving teams a repeatable way to convert idle inventory into margin and new spend.</p>
        <p className="t-body-md">Pricing is de-risked. An AI assistant, now in testing, guides sellers to optimise for speed or best achievable price and will adapt to location and availability as it matures.</p>
        <p className="t-body-md">In short, Muna makes circular behaviour a brand asset: on-site listing, trusted distribution, voucher-led loyalty, and intelligence that compounds with every transaction</p>

        <h2 className="t-display-md">Why the narrative needs a reset</h2>
        <p className="t-body-md">For many Africans, secondhand was not a trend but access. In the US and UK, the modern "pre-loved" moment is about choice and brand experience. Both can be true. The opportunity is to pair existing circular behaviour with intentional, measurable brand experiences.</p>
        <figure className="artfig"><div className="artfig-frame"><image-slot id="art2-scale" placeholder="Article image"></image-slot></div></figure>
        <p className="t-body-md">Muna's recent blog shared some context that reframes the scale:</p>
        <ul className="artlist t-body-md">
          <li>Kenya: The mitumba trade supports around 2 million livelihoods and roughly US$300m in imports, moving approximately 184,000 tonnes of clothing in 2023 (Apparel Views, 2024).</li>
          <li>Ghana: Accra's Kantamanto circulates around 15 million garments each week and employs roughly 30,000 people (The OR Foundation, 2025; Vogue Business, 2025).</li>
          <li>South Africa: Secondhand market conservatively sized at US$50–100m annually, with 70–80% transacting informally (Trend Economy, 2024; Stats SA, 2025; Standard Bank, 2025; Guzzle, 2024).</li>
          <li>Continent-wide: Recorded imports reached approximately US$1.7–1.8bn in 2022, with true value higher once mark-ups, repairs, and resales are included (Business Insider Africa, 2023; Fibre2Fashion, 2023).</li>
        </ul>
        <p className="artnote t-body-sm">Insights from MUNA's recent blog: "Buying secondhand fashion is not popular yet here" - By Esethu Cenga</p>

        <h2 className="t-display-md">What I led in our GTM working session</h2>
        <p className="t-body-md">I positioned Muna as a core layer in the continent's circular fashion ecosystem, then built a practical plan to match. We turned media into distribution, not decoration. Founder-led conversations with ICP operators and retail founders open doors, co-create content, and convert relationships into pipeline. Inside each brand's channels, we set up co-funded campaigns with clear weekly KPIs and tight iteration loops. Enterprise retailers move on a separate track with a light ABM nurture and education cadence, while execution focuses on 30-day mid-market pilots that can ship quickly.</p>
        <p className="t-body-md">Because sales is founder-led in early stages, this approach keeps momentum high and feedback loops short.</p>

        <h2 className="t-display-md">How this differs from Vinted or By Rotation</h2>
        <p className="t-body-md">Those platforms thrive where consumers transact on consumer apps and brands partner later. Muna starts inside the brand experience. The customer stays on-site. Verification and syndication happen in the background. Value returns as a voucher that drives loyalty. Different route, same goal, built for local context and brand metrics.</p>

        <h2 className="t-display-md">Why this matters for retailers</h2>
        <p className="t-body-md">You don't need to convince consumers to adopt resale. They already circulate garments. You need a clean, measurable way to meet that behaviour in your own channels and see it show up in loyalty and incremental revenue.</p>

        <h2 className="t-display-md">Why investors should care</h2>
        <p className="t-body-md">Muna is infrastructure, not another marketplace. It meets existing, under-measured demand inside brand channels, turning resale into loyalty and incremental revenue with voucher payouts and co-funded activation. The model is capital-efficient (30-day pilots, founder-led sales) and builds a data moat as the pricing and verification AI improves sell-through over time.</p>

        <h2 className="t-display-md">What's next</h2>
        <p className="t-body-md">Muna is testing an AI pricing assistant to remove friction in secondhand pricing. Today it helps sellers optimise for speed to sale or best achievable price. Next, it adapts to selling location and market availability so pricing reflects real demand. The same intelligence powers Muna Resell and Muna Deadstock, giving retailers a simple path to monetise deadstock, returns, samples, and excess inventory.</p>
        <p className="t-body-md art-last">If you're a fashion brand or retailer and want to partner with Muna, or explore structured clearance of excess stock as part of a credible circular strategy, contact founders Esethu Cenga (She / her) and Tshepo Bhengu Bhengu to start the conversation.</p>
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