Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu is founder and Managing Director of SoleRebels, one of the world’s fastest-growing African footwear brand and the only Fair Trade-certified footwear company in the world. Growing up in a poor suburb of Addis Ababa, Bethlehem decided that there was only one way to defeat poverty – use local craftsmanship to make products that can compete in the global marketplace. She decided on footwear and today 70,000 pairs of shoes leave her factory every year.
SoleRebels has been expanding rapidly and has 18 stores around the world, including in Silicon Valley (USA), Japan, Singapore, Austria, Greece, Spain and Switzerland, along with an aggressive e-commerce marketing strategy. It expects to open another 50 to 60 stores in next 18 to 36 months. In 2015, Bethlehem launched a new venture, Republic of Leather, offering bespoke, hand crafted Leather wear and accessories.
Bethlehem was the first female African entrepreneur to address the Clinton Global Initiative; was named Outstanding African Business Woman by African Business Awards in 2011; and was named one of the top 12 women entrepreneurs of the last century by CNN. Bethlehem is a UN Goodwill Ambassador for Entrepreneurship also sits on the board of United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
I first heard of this incredible African woman in a magazine back in 2015. I was reading through a list of former Forbes 30 under 30 list and a list of African entrepreneurs to watch and her name was there. I was immediately impressed with the work she’s doing.
From the humblest of beginnings, Bethlehem has built soleRebels into the planet’s fastest growing African footwear brand and the very first global footwear brand to ever emerge from a developing nation. She has created world class jobs, and empowered her community and country, whilst presenting a galvanised, dynamic face of African creativity to the global market.
Bethlehem was born and raised in the Zenabwork/Total area of Addis Ababa, one of the most impoverished and marginalised communities of Ethiopia. Growing up Bethlehem saw that Ethiopia had plenty of charity “brands” but not a single global brand of its own, so she set out to change all that. In early 2005, fresh out of college in Addis Ababa, Bethlehem founded the trailblazing footwear company soleRebels to provide solid community-based jobs.
A year after graduating in 2005, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu used a plot of land she got from her grand mother to start a workshop. She set out with the concept of using the locals in her community to create ecologically and economically sustainable jobs. Some of these poor locals whom she hired were leprosy survivors, and she paid them up to four and five times the country’s minimum wage. To make their footwear, they used recycled tyres for the soles of the sandals and shoes, and in the process, were cleaning up the environment in every ecological sense.
Tapping into her community’s and the nation’s rich artisan wealth and heritages, Bethlehem started re-imagining what footwear could be.
Seven years, many shoes and hundreds of creative, dignified and well paying jobs later, soleRebels is the planet’s fastest growing African footwear brand.
The name was inspired by a piece of beautiful serendipitous poetry that sprang from the whole idea of giving deeply marginalised folks who once had NO HOPE, the chance to become self-sufficient, independent and FULL OF HOPE by crafting innovative FOOTWEAR from recycled tires, inner tubes, organic cottons + other great natural materials!
According to her, “THAT is being a sole Rebel!”
The brand is now hailed as the Nike of Africa but Bethlehem hasn’t stopped there!
She is on a mission, to encourage consumers around the world to taste hand-roasted Ethiopian coffee. Her company, Garden of Coffee, produces a brand that uses artisanal methods to source, process, roast, and package Ethiopia’s legendary beans.
Widely acknowledged as the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia is one of the world’s largest coffee bean producers and Africa’s top grower of the plant. Coffee also has a hugely ceremonial relevance in the country, brewed using crafting techniques passed down from generations over centuries, and enjoyed in elaborate ceremonies for all occasions.
The brand has ventured into an exciting and potentially vast new market, China, traditionally a tea loving market but one whose taste buds are now developing a love for coffee. Through a subscription service, customers will also be able to receive their favorite coffee of choice in one, two, or four-week intervals.
Wow! What a woman right?! I cannot wait to see what else she comes up with to help empower the people of Ethiopia. I hope her story inspire women out there to dream like a dream.
Keep hanging onto hope (and dreaming like a dream),
Naks.
