Xolani Koyana
WHEN shoe manufacturing company Olympic Fair closed its doors 10 years ago, job losses were on the cards but Rachmat Thomas and some of her colleagues had two choices – sit idly while people left or take over the company.
They chose the latter. But they had no experience running a business because they had spent a lot of time manufacturing shoes, Thomas said.
“For us it was (a question of) whether we had the ability to do business. All that we knew was to make shoes… we came to the conclusion that in order to save jobs, we had to do something. We wanted to make a difference in people’s lives and the way we could do it was to provide jobs for them,” Thomas said.
In 2004, they bought some of the machinery from Olympic Fair and established Chic Shoes, but the business failed to take off. It was not until the company approached the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) for financial assistance that it began to see a rise in its stock.
Now it supplies shoes to Woolworths and manufactures ladies court shoes for the Department of Correctional Services, the SA Navy and the SA Air Force.
Thomas co-owns the company with David Arendse and Ivan Meyer.
Through IDC, they were able to secure funding to steady the company. Most recently IDC assisted the company in acquiring a 4 000m2 building in Parow Industria which was officially opened by Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel yesterday. Chic Shoes had been operating from a 1 800m2 factory in Riley Street, until a month ago.
Over the past eight years the IDC has provided R41 million in loans, some of which the company has paid back, for the purchase of heavy-duty machinery and other tools.
“IDC came on board when no banks wanted to assist us. Between 2008 and 2009, we had to go through retrenchments. As the business grew, to ensure that more jobs were created to meet the demand of our suppliers, we had to ask the IDC for more money,” Thomas said.
She said the company had been able to recover those lost jobs over the past five years. Currently the business employs 301 people – 200 women and 40 percent were youth undergoing skills training in machine operation.
Patel said the government was celebrating the business. Over the next two years the business was expected to grow its workforce by 250, making it one of the biggest shoe manufacturers in the country.
“When we invest in manufacturing, we create jobs that can help change the economy,” he said.
Footwear production was on the rise after a sharp decline 10 years ago. South Africa manufactures 59 million shoes a year.