Zoë Scholtz

There are certain words that apparently cause immediate concern at our factory. “I have an idea.” I discovered this again one Friday morning when I phoned a colleague about five minutes before arriving. “I have an idea.” There was a small pause. “Oh no. What now?” Poor man. The idea, for once, was actually quite simple. Put Tanky on the factory floor. Tanky is my white Tank 300, and she wears parts our team makes. We were having a special morning. The team had worked incredibly hard, the factory looked magnificent, and we had a chance to stop for a moment and recognise the people behind what we are building. Tanky had other plans for her appearance. Earlier in the week, the Gauteng cold front and rain had made sure she looked considerably more like she’d just come back from an adventure than a corporate display vehicle. Fortunately, the factory is essentially her second home these days. The guys gave her a quick wash to remove the worst of the evidence, and onto the factory floor she w...

It started, as most revolutions do, with a pair of brown loafers. Okay. Perhaps most revolutions don't start with loafers. But mine did. I am 45, almost 46, and I have spent a significant portion of my adult life working in Finance. I did my corporate years. Deloitte left its mark. Somewhere along the way, I developed a very clear picture of what a CFO was supposed to look like. Black pants. Pretty blouse. Jacket if required. Black shoes. Black belt. Repeat until retirement. Perfectly respectable. Also, as I recently discovered, spectacularly boring. Which is strange, because I don't regard myself as particularly boring. I write. I take photographs. I run. I overland. I'll happily disappear into Botswana, crawl around a factory with a camera, climb into a ridiculously high 4x4 and follow numbers down rabbit holes because something doesn't make sense. My running wardrobe contains enough pink to be visible from the International Space Station. And yet every mo...

(Or: How Ordering T-Shirts Became a Marathon) Somewhere in January 2026 , "iemand" in the office said the dangerous words: “We should enter the J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge .” And just like that, the #ICPCLAN was signed up. Race entry — tick. Now anyone who has ever participated in anything remotely corporate knows that the real event is not the run itself. The real event is the T-shirts . Because if you're going to run 5.6 km with colleagues, it might as well be done in coordinated cotton . Phase 1: The Optimism Stage Naturally, I jumped into action and put together a concept design for the shirts. The last batch we ordered for the #ICPCLAN looked fantastic — but apparently some members of the clan felt the fit was… how shall we say… aspirational . A little snug. A little optimistic. Possibly designed for Olympic athletes rather than normal humans. So this time, armed with my concept design and a determination to avoid the “painted-on Lycra” look, I ...