The Rise of Ethiopia’s Sole Rebels

By Ed McKenna

ADDIS ABABA , Jan 1 2013 (IPS) - Innovative Ethiopian footwear manufacturer Sole Rebels will open its second retail outlet in Taiwan this year. With ambitions to open 30 more franchise stores across the world in countries like the United States, Australia, Italy and Japan, Sole Rebels, the largest African footwear brand, is now fast becoming a global competitive brand.

The company currently sells its innovative range of artisan shoes made from recycled materials in 55 countries and is now one of Ethiopia’s thriving businesses with a major presence on e-commerce sites such as Amazon. Its success reflects this Horn of Africa nation’s growing footwear-manufacturing industry as Chinese businesses are increasingly investing in the sector here.

Founded in 2005 by Ethiopian entrepreneur Bethlehem Tilahun, who wanted to create jobs and sustainable prosperity in her country, Sole Rebels made two million dollars in sales in 2011 and is expecting to generate over 15 to 20 million dollars in revenue by 2015.

“We are extremely excited to open a Sole Rebels store in the heart of Taichung. Taichung is a footwear epicentre, home to the Asian design centre for the planet’s largest footwear brands,” Bethlehem told IPS. 

The new outlet expands the company’s plan to exploit increasing consumer demand in Asia’s mushrooming retail footwear market and makes it the first African consumer brand to open franchise retail outlets in Asia.

Bethlehem is intent to defy the stereotypes about her country. A poverty index released by Oxford University and the United Nations in 2011 ranked Ethiopia as the world’s second-poorest country after Niger.

But the success of Sole Rebels is evidence of how Ethiopia is ready to make a transition from being foreign-aid reliant to being able to direct its economic future by exploiting home grown skills, resources and the many business opportunities in the country, according to Bethlehem.

“Sole Rebels is proud to be the planet’s fastest-growing African footwear brand and the very first global footwear brand to ever emerge from a developing nation. It stands as living proof that creating innovative world-class brands is the best road to greater shared prosperity for developing nations like Ethiopia,” Bethlehem said.

Sole Rebels is the world’s first certified fair trade footwear company. All of the shoes are hand crafted by a staff of over 100 people using traditional Ethiopian artisan practices and locally-sourced, hand-spun organic cotton and recycled materials. In a market where the majority of footwear brands are produced by machines, Sole Rebels shoes are a breath of fresh air.

“Our business model centres on eco-sensibility and community empowerment. Our model maximises local development by creating a vibrant local supply chain while creating world class footwear,” Bethlehem said.

Bethlehem, who was on the front cover of Forbes magazine in January 2012 where she was listed as one of Africa’s most successful women, has won many plaudits and a significant amount of international recognition for her work at Sole Rebels. She is now one of Africa’s most recognisable female entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneurship is, according to the World Bank, higher in Africa than in any other region of the world.

In 2011, the World Economic Forum selected her as a “Young Global Leader”. In June 2012, she won the award for “Most Outstanding Businesswoman” at the annual African Business Awards organised by African Business Magazine.

Eugene Owusu, Ethiopia’s representative at the United Nations Development Programme, told IPS: “Sole Rebels is taking advantage of the improving infrastructure and growing local skilled labour to exhibit all of the characteristics one looks for in Ethiopian entrepreneurs.

“It’s innovative, a jobs creator, environmentally sustainable, and globally competitive. Sole Rebels is indeed blazing a trail for other local companies to follow, as Ethiopia seeks to minimise its dependency on aid.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that Ethiopia’s economy grew at a rate of 7.5 percent in 2011. This second-most populated country in Africa has been one of the fastest growing, non-oil producing economies in Africa in recent years, according to the World Bank.

The country’s export earnings increased by 15 percent to 3.2 billion dollars between 2010 and 2011, according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Ethiopia. The government aims to double exports as a share of economic output by 2015 with a much bigger contribution coming from the sale of minerals and manufactured goods.

Owusu said Ethiopia’s booming private sector would help the country continue with its growth trajectory and this should translate into poverty reduction and national development.

“Locally-grown private enterprises will be a foundation from which Ethiopia can consolidate the strong overall growth exhibited over the last decade, and to achieve the bold transformative vision that the country has set itself to become a middle-income country by the year 2025,” Owusu said.

According to a recent IMF report on Chinese investment in Ethiopia: “The manufacturing sector accounts for the largest amount of Chinese foreign direct investment in Ethiopia, attracted by low-cost labour and large-scale land leases, in addition to Ethiopia’s market size.”

Chinese manufacturers, particularly footwear manufacturers, are now starting to relocate production facilities to Ethiopia to escape rising production costs at home, but also because Ethiopia has one of the largest livestock industries in Africa to supply leather to producers.

Ethiopia also boasts one of the largest and cheapest labour forces in Africa. Ethiopia’s late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi wanted the country to become a major producer and exporter of leather shoes as part of his economic development plan.

Chinese company, Huajian Shoes, announced in 2012 that it would invest two billion dollars in Ethiopia’s footwear manufacturing industry. To date, Chinese companies have invested 900 million dollars into Ethiopia’s economy, according to Ethiopia’s Investment Agency.

Zemedeneh Negatu, a managing partner at Ernst & Young in Ethiopia, thinks that companies like Sole Rebels will help transform the economic landscape of Ethiopia and the continent.

“The company’s success is an inspiration to the newly-emerging Ethiopian private sector. It’s important to remember that until 1991, Ethiopia was a pseudo-socialist country with no private sector. Yet in a relatively short time it has started to produce success stories such as Sole Rebels, which is a good example of an export-oriented global success story from the private sector.

“I regularly use the phrase ‘It’s time for Africa’ precisely because I see more and more African Sole Rebels like Bethlehem and her company.”

Stepping Out, Ethiopian Style

Call it a small step for a brand, but a giant leap for Ethiopian business. Shoemaker soleRebels, whose funky footwear is entirely designed and made in Ethiopia, set up its second overseas outlet in the Taiwanese city of Kaoshiung last month. The brand already operates a store in Vienna.

Boosting its international profile is a distinct possibility for soleRebels, which sells the world’s only Fair Trade-certified footwear. The fashionably designed sandals, slip-ons, lace-ups and boots are handmade and feature organic cotton linings. They’re environmentally friendly too: many of the products have soles made from recycled car tires, as does a lot of the everyday footwear found in Ethiopia.

“We are working for change,” says CEO Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu. She started soleRebels in her mid-20s with five staff and a small workshop in her grandmother’s village of Zenabwork, outside Addis Ababa. Inspiration came from her homeland: poverty and unemployment indicated the need for new enterprises, and plentiful Ethiopian artisanal skills were indicative of unused talent. What won Alemu professional recognition and a string of awards, however, was her determination that soleRebels would subvert the image of Ethiopia so firmly established by the famines of 1984-5, and the international response of Band Aid and Live Aid. The brand’s foundation, says Alemu, is “trade not aid.” She adds: “We can produce and sell, and do it all by ourselves. We are not begging all the time.”

One key to achieving that ambition is the soleRebel look. Producing a pair of soleRebels takes plenty of traditional skill, andsome designs, particularly the tooToos (a kind of daytime, woolly slipper) definitely will be new to non-Ethiopians. But the idea was never to produce an ethnic novelty item. The sandals, for instance, are like Havaianas, but funkier. The suede sneakers and lace-up boots are pure urban hip. “I love to share Ethiopian’s artisan heritage with the world,” says Alemu, “but adding modern design sensibilities to give universal flavor and appeal.”

Though it presently sells mostly via its online store, the brand hopes to have 15 outlets around the world by 2020. It has also expanded into bags and will soon launch a range of hats. Back home in Ethiopia, Alemu employs 90 staff, but once she opens a new factory currently under construction, she expects to grow that to 300 employees. She is nothing less than ambitious. First, says Alemu: “We will be the best footwear brand in the world.” Second? “We will forever shift the discourse on development.”

Source : The Times

From Africa To Asia: SoleRebels Opens Maiden Store In Taiwan

VENTURES AFRICA – Celebrated African entrepreneur and CEO of Ethiopian footwear company, SoleRebels, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, has opened the company’s first stand-alone store in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second largest city.

The opening of the store anchors the company in Asia, which has a booming retail footwear market. With three more outlets expected to be opened at the end of 2012, SoleRebels plans to open about 30 outlets in Taiwan.

Commenting on the development Alemu said: “We are extremely excited by this store opening. Taiwan is an incredible market and the stores we are opening here give us a fantastic platform to showcase our incredible products and our innovative brand in an equally dynamic and fantastic market. This is the perfect place for soleRebels  to anchor our Asia wide roll-out of soleRebels stores – truly historic strides for soleRebels,”

Presently, there are more than 500 unique soleRebels sandals, slip-ons and lace-ups offered at the store at an average price range of $50 to $95.

The newly opened store has a lounge area that allows customers to learn more about the brand’s heritage and the unique artisan production techniques. Customers are encouraged to upload photos of themselves wearing their soleRebels shoes to the company’s website and are rewarded for doing so with a free soleRebels T-shirt.

SoleRebels projects the company’s global retail roll-out which seeks  to add $15-20 million in revenue by 2015.

Bethlehem is one of Ethiopia most successful entrepreneurs. She was recently featured alongside Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of LEGO Group in the first episode of a new BBC World News series programme, The Ideas Exchange,which premiered on September 1 .

The pioneering venture began with the production of SoleRebels in Zenabwork, a small village on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia in 2005 as a means of creating jobs for the people in her community by turning their unexploited artisan skill of the community to a worldwide eco-sensible product. 7 years down the line, she has achieved that and more as SoleRebels  has become an international brand and the world’s first Fair Trade certified footwear brand.

New Africa: the Ethiopian woman who made ethical sandals fashionable

By Lucy Siegle (The Observer) ---- The idea for footwear label soleRebels popped into the brain of Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu in 2004. Looking around her native Addis Ababa, she caught sight of the ubiquitous simple sandals made from recycled tyres and decided to turn them into an international brand. Twelve months later, soleRebels was launched in a local workshop with just five staff.

Made from recycled content, and bringing work to the local community, who are then paid equitably, soleRebels is as ethical as it gets. It is the embodiment of the drive to use commerce to bring about social change, and Alemu is an articulate and passionate believer. (She has twice made the Forbes "outstanding African businesswomen" list.)

But if you think she wants to create a worthy product to sell at church fetes, think again. "Actually, I don't even want to describe my brand in terms of Ethiopia. I want you to buy my shoe lines because they are fashionable and comfortable."

No wonder soleRebels has earned the soubriquet, the Nike of Ethiopia. This year, it will turn over $2m and Alemu now employs 200 staff. Next month, soleRebels opens its first international store in Taiwan, and more are slated to follow. But Alemu has her eye on one place – New York. "If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere," she laughs.

Her sources of inspiration

Sabahar Ethiopian textile company.

Muya Ethiopia Fair trade label whose hand-crafted products are top class.

Ory Okolloh, policy manager, Google Africa.

Ethiopian shoemaker takes great strides

(BBC) - Eight years ago Ethiopia's Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu decided to sell cool colourful shoes made of recycled materials, including car tyres.

The company which she started, SoleRebels, would soon become the planet's first fair trade green footwear firm - certified by the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) - and is now one of Ethiopia's most thriving businesses.

At the moment it sells its products in 55 countries, mostly through individual retailers, and its biggest markets are in Austria, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the United States. The shoes are also sold online.

It all started in Zenabwork, the poor community in the outskirts of Addis Ababa where she was born.

"My mum and my father have been working hard. I grew up watching them," she told the BBC series African Dream.

"My father is an electrician and my mother works in a hospital. They have really been building us to work with whatever we have. So I watched my parents; they're a model for me to follow in their steps."

Having trained as an accountant, she decided to venture into the shoemaking business when she realised that many talented artisans in her neighbourhood were unemployed.

"They had skills but they didn't have any opportunities to work," she said.

She also knew that there was an appetite abroad for eco-sustainable products.

"The idea of making things by hand was here, and using local materials by local people. Therefore, the platform for SoleRebels is to build our own brand from here and sell outside. That's the model that we follow," she explained.

Rebel footwear

She started the company with an investment of less than $10,000 (£6,400), put together by her immediate family.

At the moment, she has 75 full-time employees in the factory and more than 200 local suppliers of raw materials.

They use old tyres, natural fibres and hand-made fabrics - all locally sourced - to manufacture sandals and other shoes which are inspired in the traditional Selate and Barabasso tyre footwear once worn by Ethiopian rebels.

Their designs, however, are modern and seem to take into account the trends followed by consumers in the West.

They make around 800 pairs of shoes a day which are sold at a price of - on average - between $35 and $95.

"We are doing well. We are trying to do $2m this year. In 2016, we are planning to do $20m. So that's why we are working hard and we are trying to expand our working facility," Mrs Bethlehem said.

"The demand is here. It's up to us to take that advantage and to make it happen," she added.

But this does not mean that they will do business with any retailer abroad.

"We are really selective because we need this brand to stand out for Ethiopia and Africa so that's why we are taking our time," she said.

She also complained that sometimes foreign companies try to get their products at unfair prices.

"Since we are a fair trade organisation people want to buy fair trade shoes from us but they want to buy at cheap prices. That I don't understand.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I don't get enough sleep. But I really enjoy it”

Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu

"Being in fair trade is paying a proper amount of money for the producer. It's not about me taking a lot of money but for the producer who are the people who need it and do the actual work."

Currently, her staff are paid up to four times Ethiopia's average wage.

"I don't get enough sleep. But I really enjoy it," the entrepreneur said.

"I know that running a business is not that easy and there is always a threat, there is always a risk that we are going to take, but I love it."

In 2011 Mrs Bethlehem was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and her firm was one of the winners of the Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship in Nairobi, Kenya.

Then in January 2012 she was listed by the US business magazine Forbes as one of Africa's most successful women and a few weeks ago she received the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the 2012 World Economic Forum on Africa which this year took place in Ethiopia.

She now plans to build a bigger manufacturing plant where she hopes to employ up to 300 people.

The factory will be totally ecological as SoleRebel wants to continue building on its reputation of being the world's first fair trade green footwear company.