So there I was — 24 years old, newly married, and, thanks to my dad, suddenly very rich. Emotionally, though, I was reeling. His death felt far too soon. He was only 72. And yet, in hindsight, I kind of knew that this was his way of going out on his terms.
Let me tell you a few things about my dad. He was an intensely proud man — proud of his intellect, proud of his physique. I don’t want to paint him as a narcissist, because he wasn’t, but growing old didn’t sit well with him. He used to joke back in South Africa that he’d shoot himself at 50. Of course, he didn’t. But he meant it, in the way proud men say things like that. His macular degeneration was progressing fast, and that robbed him of something essential — the ability to see the world clearly, literally and otherwise.
At our wedding, Guy Johnson walked up and gave him a big hug. Dad didn’t recognize him at first. When he finally realized who it was, the shame on his face was hard to watch. That’s how much his eyesight — and his pride — had slipped.
Another factor that I believed contributed to what was about to transpire was the following: Just before the wedding, he’d transferred a million rand ($350000) from his South African account with Bruce to an overseas one. The plan was to build a house in Mallorca for him and Kirsten. It’s a heartbreaking story in hindsight. Bruce moved the money efficiently, as instructed. But if he’d delayed it by just a few days, things might have turned out very differently.
This was because the money was being sent to a Danish so-called investment banker named Henrik Holm Hansen — someone my dad believed could be trusted. Turns out, Holm Hansen was a swindler who ended up in prison for fraud in Denmark. At that moment the authorities were onto him and his accounts were being shut down, a couple of days later the transfer would have bounced but it didn't and the money was lost. Years later, Briony, Niels, and I got a few crumbs back from a class-action lawsuit — something like ten thousand rand each, in 2002 or 2003. Pennies on the dollar. My dad was deeply emotionally affected by this, I remember it was the first thing he told me when he arrived in South Africa for our wedding. "I just lost a million Rand", he said it with guilt as though it was his fault rather that the crook who had ripped him off.
My dad was no longer with us but life went on. I was young and in love with a beautiful new home and a lovely wife. One of the first things I did was buy Terry a car — nothing flashy, just a little red Volkswagen City Golf. It cost thirty grand, and she was over the moon.
I bought myself a brand new computer — an IBM 286 clone, with a Super VGA display, a whopping 40MB hard drive, and one whole megabyte of RAM. At the time, that felt like science fiction. Even more incredible: CompuServe had just become available in South Africa, via CSIR. For a monthly fee, and with a 1200 baud modem, you could dial into a bulletin board, connect to forums in the U.S., and — this was huge — download the latest drivers for your printer or scanner. Back then, every peripheral needed its own bit of software to run, usually on a floppy disk. And if something was outdated? You were stuck.
But suddenly, you didn’t have to be. And that along with all the other possibilities of now being able to communicate directly with the USA blew my mind.
I knew I had a chunk of money, but I also knew it wouldn’t last forever. I was still a student, but my entrepreneurial brain kicked into overdrive. How could I leverage this new technology? What business could I build? What did South Africa have that the world might want?
At that time, the country was on the brink. Apartheid was crumbling. Mandela had walked free. Revolution or democracy — those were the two roads ahead, and the latter was the only one I could stomach. With democracy would come the lifting of sanctions, and that meant opportunity.
I racked my brain. I kept thinking about business models that had worked overseas but didn’t exist yet in South Africa. One thing that came to mind was Cabouchon — a costume jewellery brand that Sally had worked with in London. They’d sold through a kind of Tupperware party model, and she’d done really well.
So I got in touch with her. I wanted to bring Cabouchon to South Africa. But she got back to me and said there was a fraud investigation into the company, and it wasn’t going to happen. Instead, she connected me with a pair of British businessmen who were planning a new, more ethical version of the same idea — better quality, more transparency. They were calling it Caura — with the AU hinting at gold.
Soon after my dad died, I flew to London and met one of the founders, a bloke named Ashley Mote. I invested £5,000 into the startup and became the founding member in South Africa. This was me trying to become a businessman before I even knew my arse from my elbow. I hadn’t researched a single thing about South African import duties or customs.
We tried to get it going. But from the start, it was dead in the water. The demand was there, but the prices were absurd. No chance. It flopped.
But my desire to build something didn’t.
So I turned the question around: instead of what could we import to South Africa, what could we export from it?
The answer hit me like a lightning bolt: fishing flies.
I’d always loved fly fishing. And by then, Niels was living in Lydenburg. He’d funded a young Afrikaans guy named Pete Immelman, who had started a little shop — Pete Immelman’s Fly Shop. Pete had taught five or six Black women from the local township to tie flies. He had a small storefront, some tackle, and a growing operation.
Lydenburg was producing high-quality trout flies.
So I began buying from Pete and mailing sample batches to people in the U.S. I’d met on fly-fishing forums via CompuServe. I wanted to know how the flies compared — in quality, in price, in style. The response was enthusiastic.
And that... was the beginning of something much bigger.