Baloyi is sewing up business

She wants to grow PIB nationally and employ 50 people, up from 10 presently.

- Hein Kaiser

When you walk into Elizabeth Baloyi's store she's arched over a large industrial sewing machine changing settings and ensuring the design that it's about to embroider is sorted, perfectly.

She's a perfectionist, and everything at PIB Industries is just so. Even the rows of school uniforms and safety clobber on sale are hung on rails that are all equally spaced and incredibly neat.

She runs a tight ship, said one of her staff. And Baloyi has been doing so as one half of the brother and sister pair that founded the business two decades ago in Mothibistad, just outside of Kuruman in the Northern Cape.

Since the passing of her sibling 10 years ago, she's been flying solo.

PIB Industries retails uniforms of any kind, embroiders them and soon, Baloyi will be sublimating (printing) designs directly onto large rolls of fabric for clients too.

Baloyi's operation is flanked by a butchery, a competing school uniform shop and on the other side of the centre, a college, small cell phone store and a few boarded-up shops.