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Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
AFTER hosting a well-attended edition of the Bulawayo Sneaker Fest, organisers of the annual event have pinned their hopes on major shoe manufacturers becoming a major part of future events, as such a partnership would propel the fete to scale greater heights.
The Sneaker Expo, which was billed one of the highlights of the city’s social calendar, pulled in an impressive crowd at The Barn on 22 October, with people from various spheres of life gracing an occasion where shoes were in the spotlight, despite a mouth-watering line-up of some of the city’s best performers performing on stage.
In an interview, one of the organisers of the event, Davison Feliate said the Expo had exceeded expectations, with the noteworthy crowd that came to buy and view the shoes on offer proving that the concept had struck the right chord in Bulawayo.
“We were happy with the Expo and the greatest positive that we took from it was the turnout. The turnout was great, everything ran on time, there was no violence and so everybody enjoyed. Another highlight of note was the fact that we had a lot of people selling shoes, trading shoes and viewing shoes which, obviously, should be the core of the event, besides drinking and chilling.
We had a lot of people interested in shoes and that brought a lot of encouragement on its own,” he said.
Feliate said despite the success of the event, they had found it harder to attract major manufacturers, who may have also benefited from what is now the biggest gathering of shoe lovers in Zimbabwe.
“The downside was that we didn’t get many manufacturers as we would have liked. For example, we didn’t manage to get the likes of Bata on board despite the fact that this was one of our most specific targets. If you remember, Bata is one of the biggest manufacturers of shoes if not the only one of note. I remember they used to produce Nike Cortez, they also used to produce a line of Puma.
“With their sister company Atlas World, they used to sell a lot of international brands, Fila, Grant Hill, Adidas, Nike and others. So, they strayed from that path for a while so we were hoping they would use us to cater more to our demographic who like those kinds of shoes, both young and old people.
Unfortunately, they didn’t see the need to engage us this time but we are still going to persist and engage them because like I said they’re one of the biggest brands in Zimbabwe in terms of production,” he said.
Feliate said they were already in the planning stages for the next expo, where they planned on enticing other major manufacturers.
“Yes, we will have another expo next year and we have already started planning for it. We are hoping that more corporates come on board for media space because it makes it easier in terms of budgeting.
Despite all that we are happy with the expo and we are happy. I don’t think we have a lot of complaints and we are thankful for the crowd that turned out,” he said.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter