Gbenga Olanipekun, a graduate of Linquistic and Communications turned shoemaker, explains why he made a customised shoe for Vice President Yemi Osibajo which he presented to him at the Micro, Medium and Small-Scale Enterprises, MSME, clinic in Ibadan 

By Anayo Ezugwu

GBENGA Olanipekun, a shoemaker and 2014 graduate of Linguistic and Communications, at the Osun State University, Osogbo, is passionate about his craft. He could have given up on his shoemaking business. He could have simply continued with his job at a publishing house or get another employment with a bank or school and be contented with his monthly pay. But he didn’t do any of these. He swam against the tide and risk associated with entrepreneurship in Nigeria to run a thriving shoemaking business.

His journey to his venture began in 2014, while he was doing his mandatory National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, in Delta State, where he was trained for three weeks as a shoemaker by the NYSC skill acquisition programme facilitator. After this initial training, Olanikpekun returned to Lagos, while on break in December of 2014 to search for a man making one of the finest shoes at Ejigbo to sustain his dream of becoming a shoemaker.

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.

His book sales work brought Olanipekun to Lagos where he was given a target of N25 million.  “I didn’t make one sale in the first week. The second week, no sales. Every school I went to told 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 putting pressure on me to perform, and the result was not coming,” he said.

After his resignation, he went into full time shoemaking buiness and started marketing his product through e-commerce stores such as Jumia and Konga.

He got a big break which yeilded very little during the 2016 Black Friday discount sales that spur shopping spree.  Olanipekun’s online store was one of those chosen by Konga for Black Friday sales.  “I took a loan to make the shoes. I had 250 orders. But I had made just about 40 shoes. Konga gives 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. With the consignment, I boarded a taxi. At Iwo road, I alighted from the taxi to get to the boot of the car to remove the shoes. But the driver didn’t wait. He just zoomed off. I thought he was trying to park well to avoid being arrested by traffic officials. No. He 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 also owing my shoemakers,” he recounted.

Olanipekun, who did his Industrial Attachment, IT, with Newswatch Magazine in 2011, 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. Also, he got some ladies to call the prospective buyers and explain the delay with the promise to get the shoes ready within a week. When they shoes were ready within a week, 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. To make matters worse, “Konga now started demanding for its commission. I now owe the courier company for delivering the shoes and returning them. I owed the shoemakers; I also owed 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.

When it appears all hope was lost, a friend advised Olanipekun to use his Facebook account to do aggressive marketing since he still had the shoes he made. He did just that and within a record time he started getting phone calls from people requesting for his product. “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 Osinbajo 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 customised shoe for Osinbajo in the hope that if he succeeded in giving it to him, it will popularise his brand.

He then decided to get a stand at the complex to exhibit some of his shoes in the hope that Osinbajo will pass by his stand. “Unfortunately, where I was positioned was very far away. The big boys had taken the front row,” he said.

But he did not lose hope as he contrived another plan to present the shoe to the Vice president. According to him, Osinbanjo arrived the complex in the company of Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State and had 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 customised 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 National Stadium, Surlere, Lagos. 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.

The young shoemaker said what was even absurd is that 80 percent of the shoes paraded as foreign made is China cloned, that is, Nigerians go 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. Somebody told 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.

– Aug. 3, 2018 @ 18:37 GMT |