Hi, we’re Piero and Estelle — and this is how Toeka came to be.
Our Heavenly Father always comes first
He is our foundation. The center of our lives. We don’t make decisions without his approval first. He is the one who makes this possible, and who blesses us till this day. All the Glory be to Him. Our Father helps us every step of the way. Without Him, none of this would have been achieved. He helped us grow this business to what it is today.
It started with what we were eating
It didn’t begin with a business idea. It began with a question we couldn’t stop asking: what is actually in this? We wanted to eat less junk — fewer chemicals, no GMOs, no growth hormones in our meat. We started looking for grass-fed beef, pesticide-free vegetables, and food without a paragraph of preservatives and flavour enhancers on the label. The simpler the ingredient list, the better.
That one question changed everything. Once you start reading labels on food, you start reading them on everything else too.
Then we started questioning everything else
Food was the beginning. But once we’d made the switch there, it felt inconsistent to keep reaching for chemical-laden products everywhere else. We started with body soap and laundry gel — Affieplaas was the first brand we tried, and the difference was immediate. Cleaner ingredients, gentler on our skin, and our laundry didn’t need a pile of synthetic additives to come out smelling fresh.
From there, we looked at our cooking oil. Vegetable oils sounded healthy — they don’t taste like anything dangerous. But when we looked into how they’re made, we found hexane, a solvent used in the extraction process that we weren’t comfortable with. We switched to beef tallow and haven’t looked back. The food tastes better. The pan is easier to clean. It’s one of those changes that makes you wonder why you ever did it the other way.
We went through our bathroom cupboard next. Toothpaste. Deodorant. Shampoo. We weren’t looking for perfection — we knew that wasn’t always possible. But we found that the closer you can get to real, recognisable ingredients, the better you feel. Not just about the product, but about the choice you made.
Why we started Toeka
In 2024, we launched Toeka as a way to share what we’d found. Not as experts, not as scientists — just as two people who’d done the searching and wanted to make it easier for others. The brands we carry are ones we use ourselves: Affieplaas for laundry and soap, Myrtle for hair care, Olgani for oral care, and a small but growing range of products across the home, body, and kitchen.
The name Toeka is Afrikaans for ‘back in the day’ — and that’s exactly the spirit behind it. Not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, but a genuine respect for the way things used to be made. Simple ingredients. Honest processes. Products that worked because they were made properly, not because they were dressed up in clever marketing.
We’re not here to lecture anyone. We’re not perfect either — this is still a journey for us. But if you’re starting to ask the same questions we did, we hope Toeka gives you a good place to begin.