Bethlehem tilahun alemu biography of barack
Ethiopian shoemaker takes great strides
"Being in fair trade is paying a proper amount of money for the producer. It's not about me taking a lot of money but for the producer who are the people who need it and do the actual work."
Currently, her staff are paid up to four times Ethiopia's average wage.
"I don't get enough sleep. But I really enjoy it," the entrepreneur said.
"I know that running a business is not that easy and there is always a threat, there is always a risk that we are going to take, but I love it."
In 2011 Mrs Bethlehem was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and her firm was one of the winners of the Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship in Nairobi, Kenya.
Then in January 2012 she was listed by the US business magazine Forbes as one of Africa's most successful women and a few weeks ago she received the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the 2012 World Economic Forum on Africa which this year took place in Ethiopia.
She now plans to build a bigger manufacturing plant where she hopes to employ up to 300 people.
The factory will be totally ecological as SoleRebel wants to continue building on its reputation of being the world's first fair trade green footwear company.
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"We're not green because some bloke in marketing told us it was a good idea"
As a girl growing up in Addis Ababa, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu saw people all around her wearing makeshift sandals improvised from old lorry and car tyres. Later, when she left college, she decided she would sell these handcrafted, recycled tyre shoes to the rest of the world. A decade on, she expects to turn over $6m in online sales this year; has opened 11 shoe stores in the Far East and Europe; and has plans for 50 more in the next three years.
The tyre-soled shoe developed as a result of scarcity. Waste was simply too valuable not to reuse. “When you have limited resources, everything is valued,” Tilahun Alemu says. “Everything has a purpose, even if not the purpose originally intended; and if not, one can always be found for it.” The selate tyre-soled shoe was originally popularised by freedom fighters resisting Italian colonisation in the 30s and 40s and subsequently spread throughout Ethiopia: extremely basic, cobbled together, ubiquitous.
Tilahun Alemu, a mother of three, is a small woman with a soft voice that belies her verve and drive. Born in 1980, she grew up in Zenabwork, one of the most impoverished areas of Addis Ababa, where her father was an electrician and her mother cooked and raised the children. Education was seen as the route to success and Bethlehem went to local primary and high schools and then to Unity University in Addis Ababa to study accountancy. In her student years and immediately after, she worked in leather and clothing companies learning marketing, sales, design and production.
Increasingly, she became frustrated by the disjunction between profitable companies in the formal economy and the unrewarded skills in her own community. She had grown up watching members of her family spin cotton with an inzert (a centuries-old wooden spindle); she had spun rolls of fetel (soft cotton), with her mother and watched weavers making neta Alemu was born in the Zenebework area of Addis Ababa in 1980, the eldest of four siblings. Her parents worked at a local hospital. Alemu attended public primary and secondary schools, and then went on to study accounting at Unity University, graduating in 2004. She saw resources from elsewhere in Ethiopia such as coffee and leather used by international companies to make consumer goods for sale in foreign markets. Alemu looked for a way to bring jobs to Zenabwork and to keep profits close to home. What Zenabwork needed was trade, she believed, not charity and aid. In early 2005, fresh out of college in Addis Ababa, Bethlehem founded the trailblazing footwear company soleRebels to provide solid community-based jobs. Flash forward five years, many shoes and HUNDREDS of creative, dignified and well paying jobs later, soleRebels is the planets fastest growing African footwear brand, the world’s first and only World Fair Trade Federation [WFTO] FAIR TRADE certified footwear company AND the very 1st global footwear brand to ever emerge from a developing nation From the humblest of beginnings, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu has built soleRebels into the planet’s fastest growing African footwear brand. growing to over one hundred employees, with distribution to over thirty countries worldwide, selling to market kingmakers Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters and Amazon. Franchised and company-owned stores are slated to open in Austria, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the UK.[4] Alemu wanted to create well-paid jobs which could create sustained prosperity by utilizing the artisan talents and natural resources of Ethiopia, first and foremost. The selection of footwear as the ideal product for the company came later. Alemu found herself particularly inspired by the seleate or barabasso, the traditional recycled tire sole shoe crafted in Ethiopia, and footwear became the locus around which she chose to build the company. She has create Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu , (Founder of soleRebels And Republic of Leather) Some people find success in exploiting opportunities, while others find the same in helping people. There are many ways to accomplish one’s life goals, but the best and most efficient, is the path that helps you find true happiness and personal fulfilment. This is the success story of Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, an Ethiopian female entrepreneur who set out to help the poor in her community, only to end up building a million dollar business that’s not just the leading shoe brand in Africa, but also distributes its products to over 30 countries with over 18 stores around the world, including Silicon Valley, Japan, Singapore, Austria, Greece, Spain and Switzerland. Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, the eldest child of four siblings, was born in Zenebework, Addis Ababa, in 1980, to a modest father and mother who both worked at a local hospital. After her primary and secondary school education, she went on to study accounting at Unity University, and graduated in the year 2004. 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. Her workshop went on to become a footwear brand named Solerebels, which was named after the fact that Ethiopians were one of the first to fight off the colonial masters and gain their independence. To make their footwears, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, used recycled tyres for the soles of the sandals and shoes, and in the process, was cleaning up the environment in every ecological sense. In a period of nine years, Solerebels grew from a business with just about 5 employees, to an entity that employs well over 120 peo Bethlehem Tilahun
Position: Entrepreneur
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu