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02 January 2020
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Story Valentino Ndaba
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Photo Anja Aucamp
Refilwe Xaba, the founder and CEO of Glolooks.
Refilwe Xaba, Senior Assistant Officer in Entrepreneurship Development at the UFS Centre for Development Support, is the founder and CEO of Glolooks. This Bloemfontein-based company manufactures and supplies an organic, natural hair product range.
When she first developed the products, they were for personal use. Xaba evolved from an intrapreneur to an entrepreneur. She innovated a personal solution into a booming business idea. It was only in May 2016 that she decided to go into business, following growing interest in the way she maintained her hair. “I officially started in-depth research in October 2015, after years of making concoctions for myself.”
Business and books
Xaba reckons that a research background is beneficial for growing a business such as Glolooks that has a huge technical aspect. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Entrepreneurship with a focus on marketing and is planning to use her business as a case study.
Her undergraduate, honours, and master’s studies, which she completed at Kovsies, contributed to equipping Xaba with skills to grow her business. She believes in balancing education and business. “I have always been commerce-orientated. If there is a problem to be fixed, I fix it. However, people are at the centre of my heart.”
Growing Glolooks
In 2019, Glolooks opened a salon in Westdene, where customers can receive a holistic experience above and beyond merely purchasing the product. Xaba says this is one of the ways her business is being innovative when it comes to creating relationships with customers.
KovsieScholar to accelerate pace of scholarship and research
2015-09-02
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The University of the Free State signed the Berlin Declaration in 2011. Signatories of this declaration support knowledge dissemination within the open access paradigm. It calls for research output to be made available widely on the Internet, with permissions necessary for users to use and re-use research results in a way that accelerates the pace of scholarship and research.
On 24 August 2015, during Research Week, the Sasol Library launched KovsieScholar, the UFS’s new research repository that collects, preserves, and distributes open access digital material. KovsieScholar is an important tool for preserving our university’s legacy, facilitating digital preservation, and scholarly communication. KovsieScholar will increase the university’s global visibility as well as the impact and profiles of its researchers, and contribute to the preservation and sharing of knowledge.
The UFS has committed itself to supporting the principles of open access by encouraging its researchers to publish in open access journals, and by depositing peer-reviewed research papers in open access repositories.
For more information, contact the open access team at the Library: openaccess@ufs.ac.za