By Ishaya Ibrahim
Hard work pays. Perseverance pays even more. This is the experience of Gbenga Olanipekun, a shoemaker and 2014 graduate of Linguistic and Communications, at the Osun State University, Osogbo.
He could have given up on his shoemaking business. He could have simply got a job at a publishing house, bank or school and be contented with his monthly pay. He would have avoided the risk associated with entrepreneurship. But he didn’t do any of those. He swam against the tide.
In 2014, while doing his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Delta State, he got a wind of shoemaking from the NYSC skill acquisition programme facilitator.
During December break, Olanipekun came to Lagos to find a man making shoes at Ejigbo. The shoes were of the finest stuff. The dream of going into shoemaking started developing.
In 2015, after his NYSC, he got a job as a book salesman for a publishing firm in Ibadan. It was in the course of his job that he saw some beautiful shoes on display in a shop. He asked the salesperson where the shoes came from. The woman replied that her husband made them.
“I said what do you mean? These kinds of stuff are too good to be made here. That was how I started learning shoemaking in Ibadan while combining it with my book sales work,” he said.
The hunger for learning shoemaking took him to Youtube where different tutorials on shoemaking exist.
“I started watching it in addition to physically learning it. I was able to acquire new skills which my tutor didn’t know,” he said.
One thing led to another, his book sales work brought him to Lagos.
“I was giving a target of N25 million in Lagos. I didn’t make one sale in the first week. The second week, no sales. Every school I go to, they would tell me they already have suppliers. I would then bring out my shoes for them to look at. Within a short period of time, I sold more shoes than books. I Just resigned because the company was giving me resources to perform, and the result was not coming,” he said.
Everything seemed to be perfect for Olanipekun in his shoe-making business. He even started making shoes which he sold via e-commerce stores, Jumia and Konga.
Then came the 2016 Black Friday, the discount sales that spur shopping spree. That event turned out to become truly black for Olanipekun.
“My store was one of the stores chosen for Black Friday sales. I took a loan to make the shoes. I had 250 orders. I had made just about 40 shoes.
“Konga has the option of allowing you to ship goods yourself to buyers or they do it for you. I chose self-shipment.
“I hired six shoemakers to help me meet the target. We got the shoes ready. At Iwo road, I alighted at the taxi I took, to reach out to the boot and remove the shoes. The man didn’t wait. He zoomed off. I thought he was trying to park well to avoid being arrested by traffic officials. No. He had disappeared.
“I can say literally that I was mad for like two minutes. I went down and forth Iwo road bridge like 20 times. I had told Konga that I had shipped the shoes. They were expecting their money. I was owing to my shoemakers,” he recounted.
Olanipekun didn’t allow the event to weigh him down. He got a loan from his friend to make another set of shoes for the Black Friday orders. He got some ladies to call the prospective buyers and explain the delay with the promise to get the shoes ready within a week.
Within a week, they were ready. He entered a deal with a courier company to help him ship the shoes and take their money from source.
But to his shock, the shoes were rejected by all the prospective buyers except three.
“Konga now started demanding her commission. I was owing to the courier company for delivering the shoes and returning them. I was owing to the shoemakers, I was owing to the people who gave me loans. There are times I would be crying throughout the night. I started regretting going into entrepreneurship. I literally shut down,” he said.
Then a friend told him since he had the shoes, he could utilize his Facebook account to do aggressive marketing.
“I started getting phone calls. If you ask me to bring one shoe, I would go with five. I’ll say if you buy two, you would get one free. I got a graphic artist to do a flier for me, ‘buy two shoes, get one free.’ I started making sales. That was how I bounced back,” he said.
On June 26, this year, Olanipekun got the attention of Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo at the Micro, Medium and Small-Scale Enterprises (MSME) clinic held in Ibadan, Oyo State.
He had read about the proposed visit of the Vice President to Ibadan for the MSME exhibition. He, therefore, decided to make a customized shoe for the VP.
He got a stand at the complex, exhibiting some of his shoes. “Unfortunately, where I was positioned was very far away. The big boys had taken the front row,” he said.
Osinbanjo arrived the Complex in company of the Oyo State governor, Abiola Ajimobi, and a tight security presence.
“I started thinking, how can I get across to the VP. As he was going out, I just approached the entourage. One of the security operatives around him stopped me. I screamed at the top of my voice, ‘sorry sir I have a shoe for His Excellency’.
“The man I was talking to looked into the Shoe. He could see it was customized for the VP. It had the APC logo and Nigerian flag. Within that few seconds, I had caught the attention of the VP. He came and looked at it and said ‘wow, this is for me?’
“He called the governor of Oyo State, ‘my governor, this is APC shoe.’ At that point, I was star struck. I had planned to tell him to come around and see my works. But I became speechless. The VP then said ‘let’s take a picture.’ I didn’t even make an arrangement for that. People brought out their cameras and took many pictures,” Olanipekun said.
That encounter with the Vice President opened a new phase of sales for Olanipekun. Orders started pouring from all parts of the country.
But while the Vice President is helping to promote Nigerian brand, many others are not convinced that quality shoes can be produced in the country.
Olanipekun shares an experience he says was very painful to him in 2016. “I got an order from Jumia. I left Ibadan, came to Surulere, into National Stadium. The man is a top man in that National Stadium.
“The man took the shoe and said it was lovely. He showered so much praise on the shoe. If I had known, I would have kept quiet. But out of excitement that somebody was appreciating my work, I told the man that I made it. I told him my workshop was in Ibadan. The man said ‘you mean you made this shoe?’ I said yes. The man said ‘no wonder. I was looking at this place.’
“It was instant. I told him to try opening the place, that it won’t cave. The man simply told me he didn’t want to discourage me, that my job was good but that he doesn’t wear made in Nigerian shoes. I was almost crying because I had used all the money I had to make that shoe,” he said.
He said what was even absurd is that 80 percent of the shoes paraded as foreign made is China cloned, that is, Nigerians going to China to make inferior shoes of established brands.
“If I tell you how much I spend on power. But I could also choose to go to China and make that Gucci shoe. If I’m making 100, I can make one for N5,000. But they’ll start peeling after two, three months.
“One was telling me that my shoe was expensive. He said he bought a Gucci shoe at N18,000. I immediately checked the shoe at the Gucci store and found that it was about 50 pounds. As at that time, a pound was exchanging for N560. I told him that what he was wearing was a china clone,” he said.