The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
LEADING Bulawayo-based shoe manufacturing company, Millennium Footwear is slowly penetrating the international market with its array of leather products as it forges ahead to grow its business through expanding its customer base.
Millennium Footwear managing director Mr Stuart Simali said the company had over the years sold a wide range of its footwear to a number of “walk-in” foreign clients and had received a substantial number of export orders especially for its exotic leather products.
“We are trying to make a shoe which can be marketed on the international scene and conforms to the European Union standards of which we are not very far from that. We are pursuing exports with vigour so as to improve our capacity and since the world is now a global village we have no reason to limit ourselves to the local and regional markets.
“After all we have had clients as far as Europe and Asia taking with them our shoes and that means our products are ripe for the international market.
We continue to be on the outlook for export markets. We recently sent our marketing team for a fair in Ndola, Zambia as we seek to intensify exploring export market opportunities through gracing a number of fairs hosted in the region,” said Mr Simali.
He said the drive to explore export markets has been further strengthened by the depressed local economy.
“Our capacity utilisation is currently at 35 percent largely due to the depressed economy. The demand for our products is very high but a number of our clients (retail outlets) are delaying or defaulting in terms of payment and thus we are only dealing with those that make prompt payment,” said Mr Simali.
ZimTrade facilitated the attachment of PUM experts in the shoe industry to assist the company to improve the quality and marketing of its products.
PUM is a non-profit organisation established in 1978 by the Dutch employers’ federation VNO-NCW, with financial support from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“We recently had two experts in the shoe industry from PUM attached to our company. The first to come was the one on the technical side who imparted to us the requisite skills towards improving the quality of our product, efficiency as well as a number of cost containment issues. We learnt a lot on what makes the difference between a bad and a good shoe.
“The marketing expert realised that we weren’t much visible on social network platforms and advised us on the importance of the various platforms in marketing and even assisted us to open a twitter account as well as updating our website while also emphasising on the importance of branding and promoting both our products and the company,” said Mr Simali.
He said the company was no longer bothering itself with he influx of cheap shoes mostly from China as its products are meant for a different market segment.
“The PUM marketing experts told us not to worry much about the competition being poised by the Chinese shoes that continue to flood the local market saying those that are buying those shoes weren’t our customers and as such we should stick to producing middle and high income range of shoes as well as developing new leathers, designs, quality and that our product should be unique,” said Mr Simali.
He however, said the company was feeling the pinch of the prevailing cash crisis in the country as some of its suppliers were struggling to deliver raw materials as they import most of the components for processing.
“There isn’t any company which manufactures leather chemicals in the country and as such the tanners that supply us with leather have to import and it takes time for the payments to be processed, it might even take three to four months and this affects us because deliveries of raw materials will be delayed,” said Mr Simali.
Foreign suppliers are cutting back on raw material delivery to Zimbabwe and in some cases taking legal action as local companies fail to pay for supplies due to the prevailing cash crunch in the country.
Millennium Footwear are manufacturers of exotic shoes made from elephant, ostrich, buffalo, wildebeest and crocodile hides including safari, classic, safety and security shoes as well as sandals. It also produces belts made from cattle and crocodile hides.
The company obtained a trophy dealers licence last year, which allows it to trade in game products. It gets its products from local tanneries such as Prestige Leathers and Zambezi Tanners.
@DNsingo
