As Head of Content, Foresight Facilitator and Trainer, Tumelo Mojapelo oversees and directs the research undertaken and content generated by the Flux Trends team. With a wealth of knowledge and experience in the trends analysis space, her mission is to empower entrepreneurs and business people to make better decisions through an understanding of trends. After completing her tertiary education, she found a home at Flux Trends and has been with the company since 2010. Among reports and trend briefings too numerous to mention, Tumelo oversaw and co-authored the ground breaking trend report, New Urban Tribes 2018: Consciously Diverse. Her keen eye and attention to detail naturally elevates business partnerships as she seamlessly connects unrelated factors and events that have the potential to disrupt current business models and society. She has also worked on the 2012 Flux Trend Review, The New Urban Tribes book (2012) and has facilitated the Flux Trends’ Future of Work Masterclass with Dion Chang (2018). She also presented an ABSA experience segment that highlighted mental health and wellness in the workplace. Tumelo brings her delightful and playful sense of humour, sharp wit, intelligence and curiosity to the Flux team. She has an old and inquisitive soul that is constantly on a mission to uncover fresh and complex anomalies in the world of trends.
Testimonial
“Dear Flux Trends Team
Thank you so much for today’s workshop. The methodical approach to analysing future trends outlined today is invaluable, not just for companies but for individual “use” as well.Tumelo strikes the perfect balance between reality and optimism.
For me personally, analysing the facts and potential futures often feels daunting and all doom and gloom (thinking worst case scenarios), she tempers this by the reaffirming that we each have the power to own our own future. Please tell Tumelo that, besides the forecasting tools she gave us today, that her optimism and passion is infectious and thats exactly what I (and in extension my companies) needed today.
Looking forward to the next workshop“
Carina Louw from ERRE and Milner Fashion House
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A Mindset. A milestone. A Moment of Thanks and Appreciation
A letter from the Founder of Flux, Dion Chang, to Tumelo Mojapelo (2020).
Our very first meeting was at my local coffee shop. She was nervous. She had just graduated from fashion college and Flux had passed the crucial 3-year survival benchmark: the milestone all startups use as a sign that they might just have sustainable business after all. I was looking for an intern and she was looking for something that would stretch her mind. That was in 2010.
Tumelo (Tumi, as we know her) was intrigued with the vision I had for Flux. Back then trend companies were few and far between, and the focus then was primarily on finding consumer insights. I wanted to differentiate Flux from that stream and embark on one that corporate companies would view with interest, hence the mantra: “Trends as Business Strategy”, which is still what drives Flux today. It was a positioning that Tumi understood immediately, and one that she delved into when she was offered her internship. The original internship was extended, and in 2011 her role as an office assistant and junior researcher was made official.
It is very rare, in an age of transience and disposability, for someone to stay with a company for 10 years. I am both pleasantly surprised, as well as extremely grateful because Tumi has become the backbone of Flux. She has not only watched Flux evolve and grow its corporate client base but has also had a hand in shaping its trajectory.
She currently operates as the Head of Content, as well as the editor for our newsletters – and the new look you are seeing today. But her role also includes website management and author of our weekly trend card offering. She has a remarkable creative eye and this skill can be seen in the image choices she makes when creating our newsletters, our hyper visual trend briefings and commissioned reports: a key point of visual differentiation for Flux.
Besides her creative input it is her curiosity about the world, her acceptance of the new (and bizarre) and the ability to spot a trend objectively and without judgment, which, in the trend spotting world, is a temperament one needs when watching the never-ending pendulum swing of trends and fads. Remember that in 2009 we had only started to embrace iPhones, google maps, Facebook and Twitter. Uber and Whats app had only just launched and Netflix was still DVD rental business.
It gives you an idea of the exponential change the world has undergone and what it takes to track those changes and put it in context for a business audience.
Whatever the future holds (the next decade is poised to be faster and more turbulent than the last) Tumi’s indelible mark will always be part of Flux’s DNA, and I trust that the trend spotter instincts she has honed with Flux will always guide her journey into the future.
