The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
ONE of the country’s growing shoe manufacturing company, Millennium Footwear has tapped into the Zambian market as it forges ahead to spread its footprints across the region.
Millennium Footwear managing director Mr Stuart Simali said the company managed to obtain a number of orders and enquiries at the Zambia Agriculture and Commercial Show, which was held last month.
The Bulawayo-based company was one of the 12 Zimbabwean firms drawn from various sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, automotive and financial services that exhibited at the showcase under the country’s export promotion body, ZimTrade.
“The response we got in Zambia was excellent, the Zambians liked our shoes and to cap it up their President (Edgar Lungu) and one of his ministers even bought a pair each of our exotic shoes,” said Mr Simali.
The company has 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.
Mr Simali said the company managed to enter into an agreement with a retail shop from Lusaka which expressed interests in distributing its wide range of shoes in the neighbouring country.
“We managed to get a retail outlet that expressed interests in distributing our shoes and we are going to engage them before the end of this month here as they promised to visit us as part of their familiarisation and feasibility study.
“We will also take this opportunity to finalise a number of modalities which include financial closure and transportation because the company has already given us an order for executive, casual, exotic and formal shoes. A number of export procedures will also have to be met,” he said.
Mr Simali also said the company received another order for the supply of school shoes from a prospective buyer in Zambia’s third largest city, Ndola.
“We have another prospective buyer from Ndola who wants to buy a large quantity of school shoes. The company has already requested for our sample and we have sent them and we expect a feedback very soon. So from a business point of view it was worth going to that fair and we are still receiving a number of individual inquiries from that country,” he said.
Millennium Footwear is set to exhibit at Namibia’s Windhoek Industrial and Agricultural Show slated for the end of this month as a follow-up to the enquiries it received from visitors from that country at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair this year.
As part of its efforts to manufacture shoes which can be marketed on the international scene and conform to the European Union standards the company had leather experts from the Netherlands’ PUM attached to it in June this year.
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.
