Jide Ipaye: Redefining the footwear business
Jide Ipaye is the founder of Keexs Footwear, an African- inspired range of casual footwear such as sneakers and smart shoes. Jide’s Keexs is the first innovative and social footwear brand in Nigeria and the African continent.
Jide is focused on building a world-class footwear brand with manufacturing set-up in Nigeria, with a sole aim of creating economic empowerment opportunities for thousands of Africans, especially Nigerians.
A Microbiology graduate of the University of Lagos, Jide was inspired to set-up Keexs by a personal challenge. Jide hardly found his size of shoes in the market and he rarely got the designs he loved.
As a result, Jide thought of making his own shoes to address this challenge and help others facing same problem. He saw it as an opportunity to make a change rather than a perennial problem without a solution.
Despite losing his parents at an early age, Jide was determined to succeed. According to him, the experience of growing up with different people also shaped his quest to ultimately search for new frontiers.
“Keexs started out as a personal challenge for me. Being a size 48, I hardly got my size and when I eventually did, they were not exactly the style I liked. I have been dealing with this problem for almost 40 years, so I said to myself, why don’t I start making my own shoes and also help others,” Jide said.
“I took the first step in conducting a research and went to a school in the Netherlands to learn how to design and manufacture sneakers. I did not want to focus on regular shoes,” he added.
After his study in the Netherlands, he came back to Nigeria and established Keexs in December 2015. Finance was a major challenge for Jide, but he was able to successfully jump the hurdle when he found a website called Kick Starter, a online-based US funding platform for creative projects.
Jide put up a video with a write-up that told a story of his challenges, looking at the Nigerian context, saying what the challenges were and how the problem of unemployment in the economy could be solved by looking internally and creating value through manufacturing.
And in forty days, Jide was able to raise $20,000 from the website to start his business. “Over a period of 40 days from November 2015 to December, we raised $20,000. The money was paid to the manufacturer to produce the first batch of the sneakers,” he said.
When asked what the biggest challenge of Nigerian entrepreneurs, Jide stated that funding still remains the greatest.
“In the journey of doing a business, you find out that nine out of 10 businesses fail in their first year of operation and investors are not ready to invest because of the high risk.
“In an environment like Nigeria where funding is a huge challenge, we have a lot of great ideas but the funds to purse the idea are lacking, because of high risk,” he said.
When asked if there was any time he wanted to give up on his dreams, Jide said there were lots of time he wanted to give up but the enormous support he got from his wife encouraged him to ride on. “There were times when I had doubts; personal doubts but my wife has been a very strong support. I also constantly look for ways to get inspiration by talking to people who have gone down the path before,” Jide noted.
When asked what he has done differently to ensure sustainability of the business, Jide stated that he has done a lot of research on the country’s shoe sector and understood why the likes of Bata Shoes, who was producing 10.4 million shoes per annum in the 1990’s failed.
According to him, there is also a challenge with leather supply in the sector as most of the tanneries are not functioning. He stated that as a result of its finds, Keexs is not in a rush to set up its manufacturing arm yet in the country.
“A lot of the tanneries are not functioning, and there is no consistency in the availability of materials and products and for the kind of factory we are hoping to establish, we would require a lot of technology and that is why we are not rushing to set up our factory,” he said.
“We are looking at the first phase where we might actually bring them in pieces and assemble them here. After then, we are also expanding outside Nigeria already as we are talking with South Africa,” he added.
Currently, Keexs has been signed up for a World Bank grant to raise funds to set up the manufacturing arm of the business. The company had in the last one year been trying to build channels to market. “When we set up our factory to produce 25,000 pairs of shoes a month, we need to sustain the factory and make sure it is regularly producing. For us to be churning that out consistently, we need to have a steady market,” he said.
Jide is an award-winning entrepreneur. In 2016, he won the Tony Elumelu Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.
On advice to start-ups, Jide said: “Have the ability to do anything you want to do. You are not restricted by education, and we are only restricted by our might.”
Odinaka Anudu & Josephine Okojie