Morgane Imbert says she has been “very lucky”. Part of that luck might not seem like it: the 36-year-old CEO of online fashion retailer Zando is up against some behemoths of the industry — Amazon, Shein and Temu. But she has a knack for creating opportunity.
Her online CV traces a diverse career in sectors that include finance, beauty products, education, new business development, customer relationship management, food products and catering, and IT services and consulting. A common thread is the application of digital technology.
“My passion is to create,” Imbert says. “I’m always finding ways to create, whether it’s a very material thing or something more linked to business.”
One of the material things she enjoys creating is table lamps, using objects she finds in flea markets as the base. A recent creation started out as an old heater. “It’s a good balance between effort, creativity and outcome,” Imbert says of her hobby.
Her approach to business is also creative. “I always come up with ideas. And I always try to challenge the status quo … You have to always rethink, rethink and rethink and rethink. If you stay still, [if] you don’t change the way you do things, you’re never going to survive in an environment where things are moving so fast.”
Imbert joined Zando in October 2018, after moving from Paris to Cape Town. She was promoted to head of marketplace the following July, just months before Covid shut down all retail activity except for the trade of essential goods. Imbert was assigned to sell essential goods for Jumia, Zando’s parent company.
“A lot of brands wanted to go online: fast-moving consumer goods [especially], but also other types. So it was very interesting to develop this project during the pandemic.”
Imbert had three people on her team, all working from home. Those team members still work with her, as part of more than 100 staff operating in Zando South Africa’s Cape Town headquarters and in hubs in Durban and Joburg. Imbert was appointed CEO of Zando South Africa in May 2023, one of 11 CEOs running Jumia offices on the continent.
Dealing with change — and leading change — is part of Imbert’s genetic background. Her paternal grandfather was involved in the creation of the EU and in charge of financial institutions such as banks, stock exchanges and insurance companies.
“He was very knowledgeable in terms of geopolitics, history and all those things,” she says. So it’s no surprise Imbert pursued a degree in international business at the Essec Business School, one of the three most prestigious business schools in France. A year later, in 2011, she earned an MBA in entrepreneurship at the Emlyon Business School.
Imbert also credits her grandfather for her attraction to South Africa. “He had a great life and met a lot of different people from different origins and cultures. That’s also something that I like, and I have a lot of different friends from different cultures,” she says.
Imbert grew up in Paris with two younger brothers “who are now my big brothers”, she says. “You can see I am tall; they are taller.” Their father, an asset manager, works with wood in his spare time. Her mother used to work in catering before “she had three kids very young”, Imbert says. “When she started working again, she started from scratch”, first at the reception desk in a business school before eventually taking charge of the school’s apprenticeship programme.
Imbert’s career began in 2005, with a one-month holiday job as a marketing assistant for Societe Generale corporate and investment banking in London. After earning her MBA, she held positions in marketing, business development, sales, leadership and innovation at various companies. Before she joined Zando, her longest continuous period of employment (almost five years) was at Lucky Cart, a software service and customer relations management firm that was in its early days when she joined in late 2012. Three years later she was the sales director for France and Belgium, and sitting on the board of directors.
She describes South Africa as a “really fun market, which is becoming much more interesting” with the advent of those big competitors. This prospect, she says, “opens more doors to innovation and challenges”. For Imbert, that’s another stroke of luck.