From a remote Limpopo farm to Africa’s leading homegrown active wear brand – the Burnt Studios story
Burnt Studios is a leading activewear and lifestyle brand in South Africa – and it is now expanding internationally.
It represents one of South Africa’s most impressive entrepreneurial stories, and traces its roots back to a remote farm in Limpopo province.
Founded in 2018, Burnt Studios was the result of a simple idea held by owners Pierre and Andriana Cronje:
Performance wear should look as good as it feels.
Pierre and Andriana went to work to build a community of customers who believed the same thing.
Fast forward to the end of 2022, and it had multiple stores, a team of nearly 30 employees, and had upgraded its warehouse infrastructure several times over.
By the end of 2025, and the Burnt team comprised over 160 employees, ran many retail stores across the country, had hosted successful pop-up stores in international locations like Amsterdam.
The Burnt secret sauce
Behind this success has been one key thing: Burnt is a community.
It supports running clubs, pop-up stores, exercise routines, and much more, all as part of its highly visible community-building approach.
Burnt customers don’t simply wear its clothing and apparel – they are part of a community that cares about staying active, and looking good while doing it.
Many early adopters joined the Burnt community when they discovered it on their running routes – and over the years, the brand has grown with these fans to represent a comprehensive, active, and healthy lifestyle.
Throughout this growth trajectory, Burnt has grown its team – from exclusively being run by the two founders until 2020, to over 200 team members as of 2026.
Burnt will be hiring another 25 employees before the end of the year to run and support its new stores – and there have been thirty internal promotions in the year to date.
This paints a picture of a brand that truly cares about its people – giving them the opportunity to be a key part of Burnt’s local and global growth into an iconic lifestyle brand.
An exciting future
After outgrowing its previous facilities, Burnt recently moved into a custom-built headquarters and warehouse facility in Cape Town.
Its peaceful location overlooks farms and nature reserves, and features amenities like a gym – ensuring the team can stay active even when at work.
It also has a brand experience area, and brand room for future planning, design and shoot studios, a mock retail store, video production facilities, and a massive 3,000sqm warehouse facility.
It is from this base that Burnt will launch its major global expansion efforts – with a particular focus on the high demand coming out of Europe.
Burnt will be hosting a 10-day pop-up event in Amsterdam from 4-12 August 2026 and is also launching a fulfilment centre in the city to serve the European market.
Additional expansions are taking place in locations like Namibia in the coming months.
This process is an important step in Burnt’s ultimate goal – to be the greatest global brand to ever come from South Africa.
And given Burnt’s remarkable growth trajectory, who would bet against it?
Click here to learn more about Burnt’s activewear and lifestyle products.
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