Where quality and innovation come first, second, third...
Published: 9th Feb 2022
This was intended to be a one-off feature, but it's become clear that there are many more businesses - and many more takes on how to do business - than could be included in a single issue.
So now the intention is to make this a regular segment in the monthly magazine.
As an introduction, it seems to S&V that there are 2 parallel leather value chain universes in South Africa - probably more - which hardly ever intersect.
Aside from a handful of people who live and breathe this industry, like Russell Addinall, Grandt Mason and Voden Wearne, few people are familiar with both.
The 'formal' footwear manufacturers are mainly KZN-based and concentrate on trying to supply chains with synthetic upper footwear.
Their counterparts in leather goods are mostly Western Cape- and Gauteng-based, and concentrate on the corporate (as opposed to the retail) market.
By contrast, if you were to classify the 'doing things differently' manufacturers, in footwear and leather goods:
- Most of them are based in the Western Cape.
- Most of them are fairly young.
- Few of them have experience in the formal footwear or leather goods industries.
- All of them have a flair for marketing.
- Leather is their upper material of choice.
- And critically, most of them have concentrated on the tourist market. But those that have survived 2 years of lockdowns have found a way around that.
Just by-the-by: It's not all about South Africa
The manufacturers featured in this issue are both South African, and most of those we have lined up to follow are the same. However, and oddly enough, in Zimbabwe, where decades of every conceivable State maladministration has effectively killed the formal industry, entrepreneurial crafters, making for the tourist industry, probably compete on a fairly even footing with what's left of the tanning and manufacturing side of Zimbabwe Bata Co. and the other brave formal manufacturers who have survived.
S&V Footwear & Leather Goods hopes that it will get input from entrepreneurial tanners, component manufacturers, footwear and leather goods manufacturers from the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
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