Bata SA: Renewed effort to grow brands with chains

Bubblegummers to be ‘a priority product’

Durban, KZN, SA – Broadening Bata South Africa’s brand base is a priority – perhaps the priority – for country manager Lorraine Dyer, who joined in August with a background managing apparel brands including Converse and Calvin Klein.

That has been the goal under successive managements since the multi-branded heydays of the 1980s and 90s when North Star, Idlers and Bubblegummers were among the most recognised shoe brands in South Africa.

The company has remained successful in the school category with Toughees school shoes – where Bata estimates it holds 35-40% of the leather upper school shoe market in SA – the more cyclical canvas upper Tomy Takkies, and, Bata Industrials, for a long time.

“Bata has a stable of good brands, offering good quality footwear,” she said in an interview this month.

“I have worked in many industries, delivering brands to various customer income brackets, but what excites me about them is that they offer the opportunity to provide affordable, quality, branded footwear to middle and lower income groups.”

Prior to her arrival, Bata had confined its synthetic upper school shoe brand, BFirst, to Ackermans, and its synthetic upper comfort range, Bata Comfit, to Miladys.

Other brands being sold through a number of chain and online retail partners include Bubblegummers, Power, and the made-in-Kenya Safari by Bata.

“Bubblegummers will be a priority product,” she said. “It offers many new opportunities.”

Power, where Bata SA has been concentrating on technical product, will be repositioned as a premium sneaker brand “which is still half the price of Nike or Adidas”.

For North Star, the intention is to bring back heritage products, again to compete in the sneaker market.

Several other brands, including Weinbrenner, are in the mix, but are “much smaller”.

Bata SA’s strategy is to partner with one or more chains per brand.

School shoes are the backbone of Bata SA’s manufacturing, and she said she had been impressed with Bata’s Loskop factory, outside Estcourt in the KZN Midlands – which makes Toughees, PVC and rubber gumboots, and part of the Bata Industrials leather range – both as a manufacturing unit and for its contribution to the wellbeing of the local community.

In industrial footwear, Bata globally is a major player, and her predecessor, Michael Wyatt, now President of Bata Africa and Bata Industrials, made it a priority to grow share in SA.