I’m Gabrielle Onay, the founder of Crybaby.Thrift (https://www.instagram.com/crybaby.thrift) and Picnic&Thrift (https://www.instagram.com/picnicandthrift). What started as a university side hustle to help pay my tuition has grown into a platform that supports hundreds of small businesses and creates spaces where people can connect, trade, create, and feel like they belong. Picnic&Thrift is a curated thrift and creative market platform, but I’ve always felt that calling it a market doesn’t quite explain what we do… We create ecosystems. Sustainable and self-supporting ecosystems.

Our vendors get an accessible space to start and grow their businesses, while our customers get a space to spend a Saturday dancing to music, picnicking in the sun, discovering local brands, and simply feeling part of something.

From our regular markets to events like Picnic&Thrift Prom Night and our Pride markets, community is at the centre of everything. My role is, quite literally, everything. I lead the business through developmental strategies and logistics such as venue scouting, placements, vendor bookings, and general overall systems and marketing activities. I am responsible for many of the activation campaigns we have and continue to run (such as with L’Oreal and MUNA). I also manage our relationships with clients, vendors, oversee our markets and team, secure venues, handle the finances and strategy regarding the finances, and make sure the wheels keep turning. I’ve learned every part of the business by doing it, often the hard way. My worst part is the social media (we have hired someone since 2023 to run that for us solely). I think what makes me a rising star is that I’m not interested in building something simply for the sake of being successful. I have never found an interest in climbing the social, cultural, or corporate ladder.

I want to build things that have purpose, that effect people, that bring genuine joy and support to people’s lives. I care deeply about creating opportunities for young entrepreneurs, championing sustainable fashion, and making people feel seen. This comes from a deep personal place of feeling I did not have the easiest circumstances growing up, but somehow there was always someone to lend me a hand or share in an idea – I have been a hustler since I was 12. In fact, I met my co-owner when I was 12 and she was in Matric as I was selling second hand phone covers to the various students in an effort to raise funds and start a bigger business.

My first… I guess, real business, was when I was 15. I raised R30,000 to go overseas through selling second hand clothing (fitting as this is now my full time job), doing henna tattoos, and tutoring the kids in the younger grades.

Picnic&Thrift was a natural succession for me, despite the fact I do have many freelance and contract clients, it is my saving grace and every day bread and butter. I think being a serial entrepreneur was my calling.

At the end of every market, when I watch vendors pack up their stalls knowing they’ve made money, connected with customers, and perhaps taken one step closer to the life they want, I know exactly why I do this. That, to me, is success.

I believe I was nominated for the Rising Star Award because I have poured an enormous amount of myself into building something that has grown far beyond what I originally imagined, and I believe that people in the community see this effort and work as legitimate. Crybaby.Thrift and Picnic&Thrift are, in many ways, the truest extensions of who I am.

They carry my values, my stubbornness, my creativity, my love for people, my belief in sustainability, and my slightly obsessive need to make people feel welcome and seen. What started as a university side hustle to help pay my tuition has become a platform that supports hundreds of small businesses, employs young people, and creates spaces where thousands of people can gather, connect, dance, picnic, shop, and simply feel like they belong.

Getting here has not been without sacrifice. I have given an enormous amount of my time, energy, relationships, weekends, holidays, sleep and, at times, my own wellbeing to these businesses.

There have been periods where Picnic&Thrift was effectively my entire life. I have missed parties and birthdays, worked through difficult personal circumstances, and carried responsibilities that often felt far bigger than me. I don’t say that as a badge of honour, because I have also learned that sacrifice without balance is not sustainable. But I do think it speaks to how deeply I care about what I have built.

Over the past few years, particularly while navigating significant changes within my business’s dynamics and challenges in my own personal life – I stepped into the role of leadership within Crybaby heavily and Picnic&Thrift. I took responsibility for many parts of the business and, despite the personal and professional challenges that came with that, continued to grow it. I learned how to lead, negotiate, employ, manage, create, problem-solve and, most importantly, keep going.

But the achievement I am most proud of isn’t simply the growth of Picnic&Thrift. It is the community that we have grown around it. Ruby and I lead an incredible dedicated team of youth. I revel in their work ethic, dedication, and passion for small business development.

The greatest achievement I feel is not simply a paycheck, it is watching a vendor turn a little side hustle into a real business. It is seeing customers return to each event in their thrifted goodies, recognising me and coming over for a chat, a hug, and free stickers. It is knowing that something I created and have been a huge part of has become meaningful to other people. If I am deserving of this award, I hope it is because I have demonstrated that being a rising star isn’t only about how far you can go yourself. It is about how many people you can bring with you.

My vision is to continue building spaces where people feel that they belong, while making entrepreneurship more accessible to those who have traditionally faced barriers to entry.

I would like to grow the market into something more – something that can offer business advice and solutions from a practical level to small businesses, and hopefully, scale them up. I want Picnic&Thrift to grow beyond markets into a genuine grassroots platform for entrepreneurship, where aspiring business owners can access practical workshops, mentorship, skills development, and the confidence to turn an idea into a sustainable livelihood.

I want to teach the things I had to learn the hard way, from pricing and marketing to managing money, customers, stock, and growth.

For South Africa, I hope for a future where young people aren’t defined by the jobs they cannot find, but empowered by the businesses they can build and people they can inspire and employ. I see so many of my vendors taking this route and hiring customers to sell for them at markets – essentially, they are scaling up. I want to see a culture where self-led entrepreneurs are taken seriously and rewarded fundamentally, where creativity and practical skills are valued alongside formal education and not JUST because of it, and where small businesses are supported rather than constantly having to fight their way into the room.

As a leader, I want to remain deeply involved at grassroots level. I don’t want to become so removed from the people I serve that I forget why I started, and more so, why it grew the way it did. I want to keep creating with purpose, lead with grace and empathy, and use whatever platform I have to open doors for others.

Ultimately, my vision is quite simple: build a South Africa where opportunity feels less like a privilege and more like something people can actively create for themselves. This is the spirit of Tikkun Olam for me.

I think what might inspire people most about my journey is that I have never really followed a traditional path. I have simply kept making things, taking chances, and figuring them out as I go.

One of the most exciting things I have done through Crybaby was start my own clothing label. I began turning old curtains and beautiful tapestry fabrics into wearable art, making corsets, bras, crop tops and dresses. We even had custom Crybaby labels made, which felt ridiculously exciting at the time.

I sourced sustainable cotton and had handmade beanies and hats made, all stamped with Crybaby through vinyl prints and embroidery (I own too many machines now – my apartment looks like the set of Joel from Mrs. Maisel’s factory shop). The best part is still seeing people wearing my designs around Johannesburg years later.

I have also watched Picnic&Thrift grow from a small Johannesburg once a month pop-up market into something much bigger. We literally started P&T in our backyards… and over the last 7 years we successfully expanded into Pretoria (https://www.instagram.com/picnicandthrift.pta) and Cape Town, which felt like an enormous leap – and was one I had never considered. Our first Cape Town (https://www.instagram.com/picnicandthrift.cpt) event was particularly surreal because I wasn’t even there.

I was having Father’s Day breakfast and coffee with my dad while, thousands of kilometres away, our first Cape Town market was happening. We were able to employ local creatives to run the event, which made the expansion feel even more meaningful.

Since then, we’ve expanded dramatically across Johannesburg and had the opportunity to be part of major music festivals and events, including Picnic Club.

We’ve built a name that has become synonymous with thrift and creative markets in Johannesburg. Hearing someone say, “Oh, Picnic&Thrift? I know you guys!” never gets old (actually, sometimes it does – occasionally I just want to attend another market without someone noticing me and asking for free stickers). But I think the thing I’m proudest of is the relationships I’ve built along the way. Some of our vendors have become genuine friends. I’ve watched people start with one little table and grow into businesses, shops, teams and careers. I’ve celebrated their engagements, birthdays, new babies, new businesses and big life changes alongside them.

I hope my journey inspires people to start before they feel ready. You don’t need to have everything figured out. You can start with a curtain, a second-hand jacket, a little idea, or a market stall and build from there.

Sometimes you just need to be brave enough to begin.