Passionate about design and entrepreneurship, two brothers, chartered accountant Lèan and civil engineer Roal Boezaart, founded a lifestyle leather brand Freedom of Movement in 2013 from a room in varsity. As a tribute to their mother, one of their very first leather designs was named the Zollie bag.
This mother’s day, we caught up with Freedom of Movement Co-founder Roal Boezaart to chat about his relationship with his mother and how she influenced him in both his personal and business lives.
Q: The Zollie bag was named after your mother, how did the idea come up and what was it influenced by?
A: The Zollie is a classic ‘shopper’ handbag. And of course, my mom’s favourite activity is shopping. My mother is elegant, pure, and always ready to shine her light on the world. I thought it would be great to honour her and show the world who she is in the form of the Zollie, a strong leather shopper bag.
Q: How has your mother’s influence affected the way you do business?
A: My Mom has a ‘never say die’ attitude and I would like to think that is the way we do business. There is always a solution to a problem. Starting and running a business has plenty of obstacles and success is defined by how you manage to overcome them.
Q: What is your family’s Mother’s Day tradition?
A: Family is very important to us. We usually have a big family lunch to celebrate the moms in our family. It is usually filled with good food and quality family time.
Q: How did you spoil your mother this year, considering the lockdown?
A: This year, we had to respect the social distancing rule and hosted a zoom party and all had lunch together. But we are definitely going to make up for it when the lockdown restrictions have been lifted.
Q: Off the top of your head, what would you say are the top three things you value the most about your mother?
A: She’s caring, honest and gives the best advice!
