Amid the sprawling shacks in the township of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg, a few kilometers from Africa’s richest square mile, Sandton, is Andrew Lale, a young entrepreneur who grew up without sneakers and now makes money with them.
When I meet Lale in downtown Johannesburg, the first words out of his mouth are a sign of prosperous times. He apologizes for having to do the interview alone, his entrepreneurial partner Theo Baloyi is in Dubai on business.
“We are trying to expand Bathu to the Middle East. It is always spring or summer there, it’s hot, the weather favours us a lot. So he is trying to get our sneakers that side,” says Lale, co-founder of Bathu, the company that makes shoes out of mesh, which is cool in more ways than one.
<div id="attachment_33940" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33940" class=" wp-image-33940" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Bathu-452-e1508747366663-300x200.jpg" alt="Bathu Andrew Lale" width="500" height="333" />A Pair of Bathu shoes. (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
“We call it the only breathing sneaker. When you wear it, it’s the coolest sneaker and it feels comfortable. We also realized that a lot of people have sweaty feet, so this sneaker could help a lot,” says Lale.
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Lale and Baloyi met as children playing soccer, without shoes, on the streets of Alexandra. Their friendship was bonded by a dream of owning, and making, their own sneakers. Years later, they have sold all the 600 pairs of sneakers they made, and have just started production of 1,000 more.
At the age of 15, as they were pursuing their dream, Lale sought advice from his neighbor who sold pocket squares and cufflinks.
“I said to my friend, ‘because we want to go into business, and we don’t know the journey and the story behind entrepreneurship, this is the right guy to talk to’. He gave us the pocket squares and cufflinks to sell and make a profit for ourselves,” says Lale.
The boys weren’t successful but they were given another chance when the neighbor ventured into cosmetics. They sold everywhere they could during school holidays, and this time they did well. That’s when they realized they had the knack for entrepreneurship.
They saved every cent they earned and reminded each other of their dream.
<div id="attachment_33941" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33941" class=" wp-image-33941" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Bathu-341-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" />Andrew Lale shows off his Bathu shoes. (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
Lale went on and studied to become a paralegal while Baloyi studied a BCom in accounting. After Baloyi graduated, he went to Dubai for the first time and met a French entrepreneur. He then remembered the shoemaking dream he shared with Lale.
On his return to South Africa, in 2015, the two researched the shoe industry and realized there was no African shoe brand with an African story. Everyone in their neighborhood had foreign brands on their feet.
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Later that year, Lale and Baloyi registered and copyrighted Bathu. They worked on the concept for 18 months. They wanted to use a word that South Africans can affiliate with, and found Bathu (a colloquial term for shoes).
“We analyzed trends, hip hop was a genre big in South Africa and we realized that most young cats, including me, spend too much money on sneakers and we consume too many foreign brands, more than our own [brands],” says Lale.
The pair had their idea, now they needed money; the problem was nobody was prepared to back them financially. Baloyi was putting away some of his salary while Lale was selling make-up and weaves in the streets. “As Theo was working, I was doing my thing on the side; selling women’s hair like Peruvian and Brazilian weaves. Selling them all over the Joburg CBD, Alexandra, Pretoria, Thembisa, I was just all over Joburg including the townships,” says Lale.
After Lale graduated, he didn’t want to work for anyone, he says.
“They say money is a drug, you make it and you get addicted. I used to push all over the streets.”
After a tough 18 months, Bathu was launched, on September 19, 2016. It was so popular their website crashed due to the high demand. Lale says it’s because people felt an affiliation with the name and loved the story behind the shoes.
They initially produced 100 sneakers and went around townships selling them door-to-door. They were sold out within a month.
With the profits that were made from the first 100 sneakers, the money was reinvested to produce more pairs.
Other aspiring entrepreneurs wish they were walking in Lale’s shoes.

The Cool Shoes That Fired Up A Dream

There is little more satisfying than a simple solution to an annoying problem; especially when it makes money. Thomas Edison created the long-lasting lightbulb that everyone could afford; Henry Ford did the same with the family car; in South Africa, 23-year-old start-up entrepreneur Sibusiso Ngwenya has invented an item to close the gap between his pants and shoes.
Ngwenya is a tall man; 1.9 meters in his socks and struggled all his life to find trousers that would fit down to his shoes.
So, he came up with socks to close the gap and made them in bright colors to make the point.
“I was teased growing up and given different names. I deliberately named the brand Skinny Sbu Socks because I thought I had been teased enough and it was high time we celebrate being tall and skinny,” says Ngwenya.
A sock collector at a tender age, his defining moment was reading of two Americans building sock brands.
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A few weeks later, his mother suggested he sell them.
“I had bought 14 pairs of socks for R5 ($0.40) each and I repackaged them and sold them for R25 ($2) a pair.”
He counts former Top Billing presenter Tumisho Masha, politician Tony Yengeni, TV personality Maps Maponyane, celebrity entrepreneur and philanthropist Shaka Sisulu, and the leader of opposition political party the Democratic Alliance, Mmusi Maimane, among his celebrity clients.
“I do such designs simply because I am African. At the heart of what I’m doing, I’m trying to express myself as an artist inspired by their surroundings. Our heritage is what we have to our advantage as Africans. I use that to gain the competitive edge among my international competitors,” he says.
The company also sells to Standard Bank and Cadbury. He makes R100,000 (around $8,000) a month by advertising and selling on the internet. His company employs three people and outsources bookkeepers, legal services and manufacturing staff.
“I am concentrating on building a brand, focusing on craftsmanship, artistry and the engineering of the sock while other brands are mass producing,” he says.
Ngwenya tried and failed to launch a sock store, but is working on Skinny Sbu Socks vending machines.
Skinny Sbu Socks produces five never to be repeated designs every two months.
“As men, our fashion is limited. The only things you have to play around with are your accessories which are very limited. So men want really colorful socks.”
He takes pride in the locally produced products.
“It is expensive to manufacture locally and it takes a long time because of limited colors. In China, for example, it would cost me $0.02 to produce a pair, this side it’s a thousand times more. The factory I outsource employs 60 people so I am comfortable knowing making these socks goes on to feed more than 60 families in South Africa.”
Although Ngwenya shies from divulging details, he says no business is without worst days.
“I recently lost out on a R2.5 million ($200,000) deal because I was not focused. I tried working with PR experts only to realize that I was making a mistake.”
Growing up in a three-bedroom shack in Tsakane, a township to the east of Johannesburg, he was taught love and forgiveness.
“I didn’t know we were living in a shack, I thought we were living in a mansion until someone from school came to visit and made fun of me. When I grew up, I learned that I am enough. I am not better or less than anybody. I am enough.”
His grandmother, Salamina Molokeng, is the force behind his success.
His future plans are to create designs with his grandmother entitled “stories with my grandmother”.
“I want us to promote art. I am an African woman and I want us to showcase every African nation in the sock designs,” says Molokeng.
At the risk of mixing a metaphor that knocks the socks off anything, necessity truly is the mother, and grandmother, of invention.

Socks   The New Tie

The Adams Pavilion, a dusty shopping center selling aromatic oils, kitschy cushions and costumes in the noisy Sar Bet area of Addis Ababa, is hardly the setting for a flagship shop selling high-value branded shoes to 16 stores around the world, from Singapore to Switzerland to Silicon Valley.
Yet, that is where it all started – from a single outlet in Ethiopia.
Above the din of traffic outside, the diminutive Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, in jeans, a white T-shirt and blue blazer, her hair coiffed into a careless bun, is retelling the genesis of her hugely successful business, soleRebels, 10 years ago.
To her customers across the world – ranging from techies in San Jose to gym nuts in Taiwan – she has broken every popular perception of Ethiopia. Instead of handouts going into the country, here was handcrafted footwear – with soles made of recycled tires – going out of it to stores across the globe.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30632 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/XB4R0064-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/XB4R0064-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/XB4R0064-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/XB4R0064-1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/XB4R0064-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/XB4R0064-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/XB4R0064-1.jpg 682w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
We are sipping espressos – from the local Starbucks-inspired café below her shop – and Alemu mentions that her humble middle class background taught her to be industrious. Her mother helped as a cook in the kitchen of a local hospital, while her father worked hard as an electrician in the same hospital to raise his daughter and two sons.
“Growing up, I saw people trying to make it every day at the hospital. Leprosy patients getting treatment would also work. What I learnt from them is their dedication, how they worked hard and loved life and their culture,” says Alemu.
At home, she had the same rights as her brothers; her parents saw her as no different.
“In college, I wanted to create something authentic at the same time global, supporting the local community. But 10 years ago in Addis Ababa, it was almost impossible to do something like that because of the infrastructure.”
Alemu got married, and at the age of 25, quit her “boring” accountant job in a private company wanting to turn entrepreneur. She had nothing going for her except hope. She wanted to create a brand out of Africa, tapping into the local culture and talent.
“I had to put together a plan and be really brave.” But why shoes?
“I was looking at what people did widely in Ethiopia, and that was scarves, dresses and robes. I wanted to be innovative, and start from scratch.”
Recycled tire didn’t cost anything, and it was not an alien concept. Ethiopia’s rebels had famously fought off the invading forces in ‘barabasso’ sandals made of old tires.
Alemu took this idea and self-financed ($5,000) her dream, starting with five workers in a workshop on her grandmother’s land in the village of Zenabwork.
It took her two years to get it right. Initially, the prototypes weighed six kilos a pair.
“The shoes were really heavy, as I didn’t know how to cut the tire. They looked really funny. I kept trying and trying to develop the perfect product.”
She knew she had to come up with an artisanal product using local fibers she could sell globally moving up the Africa value chain.
“In my factory, in Yeshideble, we don’t have any machinery. You will find a lot of people sewing. It’s like music. We have a unique way of working with communities, where we have a culture of spinning and making our own clothes at home. These women, when they are old, are not so productive, so we give them jobs. We have 120 women who spin for us, they don’t need to go out, we collect [the goods] from them every week…These are mothers, grandmothers…they have their coffee and spin for soleRebels.” They are also paid more than the industry standard.
She is now building a $20-million state-of-the-art factory, to be completed by the end of the year.
“We currently do 200 pairs of shoes a day, when the big factory opens, we will do 2,500 a day.”
Alemu has standalone stores in Barcelona, Vienna, Zurich, Athens, and is set to open her first shop in Canada. She has 12 stores across Taiwan. Her label is certified by the World Fair Trade Organization.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30631 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/MC_OPEN1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MC_OPEN1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MC_OPEN1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MC_OPEN1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MC_OPEN1.jpg 666w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
Her colorful shoes retail from $65 onwards. Earlier this year, Alemu diversified her business to include bespoke leather jackets (available online at about $60), dresses and bags.
Alemu is also launching in September a new coffee brand, Garden Of Coffee, “hand-roasted by traditional Ethiopian coffee artisans”.
Is the mother of three a billionaire yet? There is slight hesitation, and then a smile.
“Let’s see…The company’s growing but we are always looking at investing our monies somewhere.”
And then she says in one breathless sentence: “It doesn’t matter how much I have. What I want is to create a platform for everybody and they can come and work. And it’s something I love to do. I see it, I invented it, it grew up with me, it’s inside me, it’s my baby.”
Ten years ago, nobody talked about entrepreneurs, says Alemu.
“I was not looked at as an entrepreneur, only as a businesswoman.”
Times have changed. Alemu was recently awarded a PhD (Hons) in commerce from Ethiopia’s Jimma University.
“The government believes in entrepreneurs, and I am really happy we get noticed at the end of the day,” she says.
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Her guiding philosophy
“One of the things helping me is not to see myself as a woman. When I see myself as a woman, I always fail. We don’t have the confidence, we always say yes, we don’t say no – that’s going to take you down. Whenever I deal with people in offices, I am a business person. I have a goal and no one can stop me. All I think about is my business and my customers.”
If the last decade was this eventful, where does she see herself in the next 10 years?
“I will probably have 500 stores around the world,” says Alemu, ever the optimist set to ensure that with every step, her country moves forward too.

bethlehem-tilahun-alemu-founder-ceo-soleRebels-footwear-cropped

Heart And Sole

It was a hard place to start. It was the worst night of his life. Sello Senyatsi is from Katlehong in the east of Johannesburg. One night, back when he was in his early twenties, in the Limpopo province, in the north of South Africa, all Senyatsi had on his mind was revenge. In his hand was a gun. He found it in a car that was involved in an accident.
With this gun he wanted to get back the money he believed was owed to his father. He drank far too much and marched to the petrol station of the man he believed to be his debtor.
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“I can’t say what my purpose was then. I don’t know if I wanted to shoot him or if I wanted the money. As I entered [the petrol station premises], I fired one shot. On the second shot, the gun jammed. There were about six guys in there who got up and beat me up. He burnt my leg with a cutting torch then his police friends came and arrested me,” says Senyatsi.
Not your everyday beginning for an entrepreneur.
With a criminal record and a stint behind bars hanging over his head, Senyatsi was determined to turn his life around and to start a successful business. His cellmates would probably never believe it but Senyatsi is doing just that through Sello’s Gutters and Fianco, a shop selling bespoke shoes.
We meet at the swanky 54 on Bath hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Senyatsi is dressed in luxury Italian clothing—Angelo Galasso faded blue jeans and the brand’s royal blue blazer. The designer shoes he’s wearing are a far cry from the sneakers he used to wear at varsity. Those had added cushioning because they were two sizes too big. He’s had a taste for the finer things in life from a young age and has honed that affection to this day. Growing up in South Africa’s East Rand drove him to stand out from his peers.
It was during his second year studying law at Turfloop University, in the Limpopo province, that Senyatsi’s trouble started.
His father lent a friend around R10,000 ($930) to buy petrol for his filling station, which the friend promised to pay back. The money was supposed to pay for his son’s university expenses. The mistake that Senyatsi’s father made was that he never formalized the agreement. The day before his father was going to collect the money, he died and it was left to his son to collect what was owed.
Broke and sullen, Senyatsi sold anything he could lay his hands on to eke out a living and continue with his studies.
A week later, while driving back from his father’s funeral, Senyatsi came across a car accident and stopped to help. He opened the glove box and found a gun and a wallet, both of which he took.
This was the gun he used at the petrol station, the gun that had him arrested and charged with robbery with aggravating circumstances in 1990.
“My trial didn’t even take long. I pleaded guilty. I remember when I was sentenced and they said 12 years and six months, I somehow heard 12 weeks or something else, but not 12 years… I think it took me the whole day to realize how many years I was going to serve,” he says.
Before he even made it to his cell, another convict who saw that he was very young gave Senyatsi the 411 on what went on behind bars.
“I was told that everybody knew I was coming already and that I’d be turned into a woman,” he says.
This was all because of a home-made tattoo he had got four years earlier. It meant that he belonged to a certain group and if he got into trouble, that certain gang would protect him. It also meant that he would be prey to another gang. Senyatsi removes his gold trimmed, blue strapped watch and reveals the smudged tattoo.
His first three days without food were tough. He survived on toilet paper and toothpaste. But after that things became easier, practising and abiding by the advice of the fellow convict. Along the way, he even survived a stabbing.
Following the end of apartheid, the government started to integrate the black and white prisons and this is where Senyatsi learnt to make guttering systems.
“Those prisons were well equipped; motor mechanics, carpentry, by then I mean any machinery was there. For the blacks it was just working in the fields and peeling potatoes. And that’s how they [white people] survived, learning a lot. And that’s when I learnt sheet metalwork,” he says.
He learnt all that he could and after six years in prison, he was released on parole for good behavior.
In 1998, Senyatsi started running Sello’s Gutters, a firm specializing in manufacturing stainless steel gutters. The business came by chance. His sister had placed an order for gutters, but had to wait six months before they could be delivered. Using the skills he had gained while in jail, he tried his hand at making the gutters himself, using his employer’s machines in his spare time.
His employer, a catering equipment manufacturer, was impressed by Senyatsi’s craftsmanship and told him the business should rather concentrate on gutters. During the week, he worked at the manufacturing warehouse, while on weekends he made and installed the gutters alone. Within six months, Senyatsi left the company and it subsequently closed down. His former employer then gave the machines to Senyatsi and he began making gutters at home.
He started selling and installing the gutters in Kathlehong and the nearby Daveyton township. He even gave them a different look which made them unique.
At first, he was making five gutters a month and within three months business was booming. He was getting clients through word of mouth. He even took out a loan against his house to buy new machines that would help him making these stainless steel gutters.
What made his business successful was his persistence. He even showed this quality when he gave up the gutter business. He started selling the gutters on credit and was making a loss. Having to knock on clients’ doors who delayed payment reminded him of why he went to prison.
“I had bought a car and went to Pretoria to visit my friend in another township. And my business fell away. Then I moved to Pretoria to start selling chicken,” says Senyatsi.
By the time this business had also shut up shop, he had saved a lot of money and returned to his gutter business in 2001.
“I told myself that I will not sell anything on credit anymore. Until today I do not do that,” he says.
“This [stainless steel gutters] is an innovation made from the township. I didn’t copy it from the internet or anywhere else. It’s a concept, it’s my design. I even came up with the idea of doing the gutters in stainless steel. Even my supplier would tell you that he started off by telling me that ‘Sello you’re mad, no one will buy stainless steel gutters’… Now you are talking about a project that has created a massive demand,” he says.
His business has grown from buying one ton of steel, that lasted a year, to 40 tons.
Today, Sello’s Gutters employs around 160 installers and hopes to establish a franchise with some of its current employees.
“I love seeing people grow. Money doesn’t make me as happy as empowering someone,” says Senyatsi.
The entrepreneur saw an opportunity which now generates a turnover of R20 million ($1.86 million). Houses in townships like Soweto, Daveyton and Katlehong are quickly catching on to stainless steel gutters.
“We are moving to a point where we want to be a giant for the guttering system,” he says.
While building his business, his love for fashion never faded. As someone who grew up traveling from the north of South Africa to as far as the east coast in Durban to buy or check out the latest trends, Senyatsi is a fashion head who has never liked to dress like the person next door. This passion filtered down to his two sons who died in a car accident in March last year, about three weeks before they were to open Fianco, a shoe boutique store selling some of the most exclusive Italian shoe brands in South Africa.
“I found strength… it was the hardest thing any human can face. My one son was 18 years old and the other was 21. It devastated me when we had to open it [Fianco]. We spent around R1.3 million ($120,000) on putting this shop together,” Senyatsi says.
The 46-year-old father decided to go ahead with his sons’ idea, which he says is becoming a success despite its location in a quiet street in the Limpopo province. It is inspired by the luxury shoe shops of Milan. Asked why his shop is not in the country’s economic hub, Johannesburg, Senyatsi says there are issues with rights.
“There are people who own those brands in Johannesburg. I’m not allowed to sell there,” he says.
Three months after his sons died, Senaytsi went on a holiday to Italy’s fashion capital, Milan, where he visited a shoe shop where the cheapest shoe was $5,500. On this particular day, he was lucky to have met a taxi driver who drove him to a custom hand-made shoemaker, Silvano Lattanzi.
After meeting its owner, the Fianco boutique is the only store on the continent that sells the Silvano Lattanzi shoe brand. The owner even made Senyatsi and his wife a pair of shoes and boots respectively, with their sons’ names engraved on the sole. Silvano Lattanzi shoes are handmade and comprise a business that has preserved the Italian way of making shoes which could cost around $30,000 with a 20-year guarantee.
“The market is there, we don’t disclose our customers. But I’m meeting serious people through this brand. And that is how I link it to the gutters. I’m able to speak about my gutter business with these serious people.”
These serious people probably don’t believe how a former convict is making his fortune through gutters and shoes.

Bullet, Prison, Gutters, Shoes, Success

Women walk for miles with buckets on their heads to fetch water, as the warm air rustles the leaves of the eucalyptus trees. Children play outside and men work for little or no pay. Here, in the village of Zenebework, Addis Ababa, one of the most impoverished parts of Ethiopia, the people rely on international aid for food and supplies.
“It’s how we lived and how we survived…” says Bethlehem Alemu, founder and CEO of SoleRebels.
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When Alemu was a young girl she was saddened to see her neighbors struggle to make a decent living because of the lack of jobs.
“I don’t like to call people poor. I would call them disadvantaged… if you give opportunities to the poor, they will no longer be poor.”
After university she returned home, determined to create a better life for her community, one that would empower it through its members’ creative skills. With $10,000 and a few employees her dream and artisanal shoe brand began to take shape.
“It has a strong investment on people. It’s not about giving aid but teaching people life skills that will sustain them in the future.”
SoleRebels makes eco-friendly shoes that combine traditional Ethiopian Selate and Barabasso shoes with modern production. The shoes are made from recycled tires and natural fibers. Alemu says that although the market share for green products is small, it opens up a lot of opportunities. However, this requires a lot of marketing.
“We selected shoes because we saw that footwear was an excellent platform to begin to share many of the indigenous, eco-sensible, craft heritage and artisanal talents that we have here in Ethiopia,” she says.
It was a simple idea that turned the company into the first fair trade-certified footwear brand under the World Fair Trade Organization. Over the years SoleRebels has expanded and become the fastest-growing African footwear brand with stores in over 30 countries across the world. It is also the country’s number one exporter to the United States.
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The success of the company has transformed Alemu into one of the most successful businesswomen in the world. She has appeared on the Forbes ‘100 Most Powerful Women in the World’ list and was selected by the World Economic Forum (WEF), as a 2011 Young Global Leader. Last year, she sat alongside Sir Richard Branson, Bob Geldof and Arianna Huffington as one of the councilors at the One Young World (OYW) summit, which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In her address to the youth at OYW, she spoke of the importance of being innovative and how blazing your own path will pave the way for others to follow.
“When I started the business I was afraid because the market was not there&#8230; I didn’t follow anybody’s road. What’s happening in Africa is there is one big road and everybody’s following it.”
One of her biggest challenges was breaking through the mindset of those who believed an African footwear brand would not succeed.
“There are a lot of entrepreneurs in Ethiopia who are doing really well, but they don’t know how to sell their product, how to market it, or how to brand it. It’s not only a problem in Ethiopia, it’s all over Africa.”
Another issue that troubles many female businesswomen is gender inequality. Alemu, fortunately, has never been treated differently or had difficulties because she is a woman.
“I don’t think females should think like a female, they have to see themselves as a person who has a dream and can make their dreams come true. I don’t want to put myself back in that box when I am already out of that box.”
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According to Alemu, the key to a successful business – whether you are in Africa, Europe or America – is to follow the business strategies of successful companies and adjust them to suit your community. The problem for Africans is the disconnect and lack of trading agreements between other countries.
“Whenever people want to start a business, they always look up to somebody and that’s a problem. We don’t ask: ‘how are other companies reaching this point?’ or “how am I going to build that inside my company?’”
As the founder, she has ambitious dreams for her Ethiopian-based company and wants it to become the “Apple of Africa”.
“I am inspired by the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs. I love how he came up with the idea and said I want to have this kind of product next week and then people put it in front of him the next week.”
Looking back, Alemu never thought that the footwear company with the quirky name would become what it is today. She set out to create a business that would allow her to earn an income and better the lives of the people around her, and today she is one of Africa’s most successful female entrepreneurs.
The people of Zenebework, who once felt hopeless, now stand with dignity. It was one small step for Alemu, but one giant leap for Ethiopia.
She just happened to do it in a pair of  SoleRebels.
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Tag: Shoes

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Cool Shoes That Fired Up A Dream

Socks The New Tie

Heart And Sole

Bullet, Prison, Gutters, Shoes, Success

In The Shoes Of A Rebel