Cara and Jimmy are very pleased to report back us. Happy by Nature has experienced a successful summer season. However, with the onset of winter, there has been a noticeable drop in foot traffic, which has created some uncertainty about what to expect.

That being said, considerable improvements have been made over the past few months, implementing or adapting some of the recommendations of the Imperial College team. In terms of financial management, Cara and Jimmy have opted to take a firmer approach with their accountant (rather than outright firing him, as was initially suggested). He has since hired more staff and now provides monthly management meetings with proper financial reporting. In terms of systems integration, Happy by Nature is working to align their point-of-sale system with their accounting software and streamline card payment processing. Finally, in terms of business growth, they've been able to invest in the business based on solid financial data rather than just intuition, and have expanded their design, installation, and maintenance services.

Of course, there are ongoing challenges, not least in terms of inventory management, (too much reliance on intuition rather than accurate documentation), systems implementation (notably for inventory tracking) and operational capacity (being open seven days a week while being heavily involved in day-to-day operations makes systematic improvements challenging).

Happy by Nature has also established an indigenous medicine garden within the University of Cape Town’s Faculty of Health Sciences and recently received encouraging feedback that the faculty wants to incorporate indigenous knowledge and traditional healing into their curriculum at all levels as part of what is termed “decolonising medical education”. Cara and Jimmy plans to run a three-day training program in October and are entering discussions with faculty members about broader integration.

They are incredibly grateful for the Imperial College intervention: “It was hugely beneficial and great to have such an enthusiastic team with us, who clearly were a lot more experienced especially on the financial side - they really pushed us in the direction that we needed to go and gave us the confidence that we to make those shifts”.