The Drip footwear brand: managing a successful start-up launch and rapid expansi

The Drip footwear brand: managing a
successful start-up launch and rapid
expansion during Covid-19 pandemic
The Drip footwear brand: managing a
successful start-up launch and rapid
expansion during Covid-19 pandemic
Steven Zwane, Motshedisi Sina Mathibe and Anastacia Mamabolo
Introduction
In July 2019, Mr Lekau Sehoana launched his start-up business venture called Drip
Footwear [1], which sold branded sneakers. It took Sehoana 6 weeks to sell the first 600
pairs of shoes from his car boot, not having applied any robust marketing strategies. During
his interactions with customers, it became clear that there was a gap in the market and
demand for a new South African sneaker brand. In December of the same year, he
manufactured and sold 1,200 sneakers within a few days. This rapid achievement was
enough confirmation for Sehoana that there was a need for locally manufactured and
branded shoes. Based on his early success, Sehoana decide to launch of his own
business. However, during the process of planning the formal launch, the world suddenly
experienced the first impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. During the stage of planning the
mode of operation and the full business launch, in March 2020, South Africa was placed
into the Covid-19 Alert Level 5 lockdown [2], which had an impact upon and complicated
Sehoana’s decision-making process. Despite the extremely severe lockdown regulations in
place at the time, in May 2021, Sehoana had already managed to open 11 stores in
reputable malls and sold multiple thousands of his sneakers. This instant success, putting
pressure on the manufacturing ability, distribution and costing structure, led to Sehoana
questioning the cause of the rapid growth during a pandemic and whether this level of sales
would continue to post the Covid-19 era. His major question was whether and how he would
be able to sustain the fast growth of his business without the constraints caused by the
lockdown.
Background and early years
Lekau Sehoana was born in Limpopo [3] and is an entrepreneur who progressed from a
stage in his life when he did not have any shoes to wear in High School, to establishing,
owning and managing one of the biggest and fast-growing sneaker brands in South Africa.
Sehoana’s upbringing was a challenging and difficult one because of the poor economic
living conditions in Limpopo [4] and the family issues he had to master. In the early 1990s,
Sehoana and his mother and three siblings moved to Gauteng Province to settle in a
township called Alexander [5] to seek better economic and living opportunities.
When Sehoana was still in Primary School, his family had relied on government feeding
schemes, and thus he was unaware of his poverty. However, in 2003, when he started High
School at Eqinisweni Secondary School, he realised that his family was poor when he
compared himself with other learners who came from middle-class families [6]. His mother
Steven Zwane,
Motshedisi Sina Mathibe
and Anastacia Mamabolo
are all based at the Gordon
Institute of Business
Science, University of
Pretoria, Johannesburg,
South Africa.
Disclaimer. This case is written
solely for educational purposes
and is not intended to represent
successful or unsuccessful
managerial decision-making.
The authors may have
disguised names; financial and
other recognisable information
to protect confidentiality.
DOI 10.1108/EEMCS-06-2021-0196 VOL. 12 NO. 1 2022, pp. 1-18, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2045-0621 jEMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 1
did not even have enough money for the school’s fundraising activity known as Civvies [7]
day. Since he did not own any fashionable clothes, Sehoana decided to make himself a T-
shirt, which he used as his Civvies attire. He received such positive feedback from his peers
that this encouraged him to also design a pair of sneakers. This was the beginning of his
love and passion for fashion design and entrepreneurship.
Although Sehoana essentially recreated the shoe for his own use, there was a huge interest
in his ability to remodel sneakers, and this soon became a business venture for the
youngster. He continued to pursue the passion for remodelling sneakers throughout his
years at High School from 2003 to 2008. It was the sneakers venture that helped him to be
able to buy a decent pair of school shoes, and also financially support his family.
Past entrepreneurial failures
When Sehoana was in his mid-teenage years, and while balancing his High School efforts
with his fashion enterprise dream, eager to take the sneakers business to the next level,
he conducted an intensive research on the fashion industry. After this process, when he
started to understand the industry a bit better and who the key role-players were, he
developed a business plan to be able to apply for funding. With the support from one of his
teachers, who believed in his vision and a good design portfolio, he approached
established organisations for potential partnership and funding. Sadly, he failed to obtain
funding and support.
In 2012, he went back to the drawing board, believing there was an opportunity to launch a
cleaning business. Despite the promising performance of the business, he felt as though
the returns were not sufficient or worth any sleepless nights. He decided that he wanted
more out of life, one of which was to study at a college, and thus he passed on the business
to his cousin.
He registered to study Civil Engineering at Ekurhuleni West College in 2013. While he was
still in the final year of his studies, he was already used as a site manager in a construction
company. Sehoana felt that his life was now restarting on a positive level, but within eight
months, he was retrenched on the basis of “last in first out”. However, despite this setback,
he was able to find another job in the mining industry, and in 2018, he married his High
School sweetheart. With the increasing family responsibilities in his role of provider, he
decided to launch a Chicken Dust [8] business. Upon conducting in-depth research on the
different locations and developing a business plan, he was convinced he had found the big
break-through concept. In 2018, he resigned from his work and sold his car to raise capital
for the new venture. Unfortunately, and because of too many assumption having been made
by him, the Chicken Dust business did not do well and had to be closed down within five
months. This left him in debt.
Reflection and re-entry into entrepreneurship
After the failure of the Chicken Dust venture, Sehoana found himself without a job, no
income and drowning in debt. He reflected on why he was failing and not able to sustain his
businesses. Fortunately, his wife believed in him, motivated and assured him that he was
going to rise again and be a successful entrepreneur. Following this business failure, he
took a gap year in 2018 and became a stay-at-home husband. He had been reading
fashion magazines and that is when the “fashion bug” bit him again. Sehoana remembered
that he had always had a passion for fashion entrepreneurship as demonstrated during his
High School years. He conducted a study on the industry from the comfort of his home,
looking for an entry angle that would work for him. He settled on pursuing the sneakers
business, but said to himself that “If I am to do this thing, then I have to do it big”. From his
research, he knew that he would need to target ladies for his products because they are the
major buyers of shoes and the target market for his sneakers. Since South Africans actively
PAGE 2 jEMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES jVOL. 12 NO. 1 2022