Theo Baloyi is the 28-year-old founder of “Africa’s premium sneaker brand”, Bathu. With his accounting background, he worked in South Africa and the Middle East for 5 years prior to starting the brand. The business is about three and a half years old at present. While Theo was a BCom student, he and friend would sell perfumes door-to-door on the streets of Alexandra. “I’d say that’s where the entrepreneurial bug bit me,” he says. He was 19 and in his second year of university.
Theo recalls that while he was growing up in the township, not everyone could afford to buy a good scent. “Me and my best friend who is now my business partner, Andrew Lale, decided to sell oil-based perfumes,” he shares. “We went to this factory where they were manufactured and we bought them for close to nothing. People loved it and I think that’s where we learned a bit about business in the practical sense.”
he story of Bathu’s conception is worthy of telling. “One day it happened that I was traveling to the Middle East for work. I had a 7 hour layover at the airport and while wandering around, bumped into a man who owned a retail clothing store.While speaking to him about his brand, I noticed there was a lot of traffic in his store; he was attracting a number of customers. What I took away from the conversation was that his brand resonated with the French people, and he was using it to tell their stories. Hours later, during my flight, I thought about the way Africans could tell their own stories.”
The word Bathu is township slang for ‘shoe’, and Theo with that as a starting point, Theo began to conceptualize a way to tell his own stories as a young, urban South African man from the township. “When I was doing my research I learned that there was not one sneaker brand from Africa that could be benchmarked internationally” – that is what Bathu seeks to be.
An important part of Bathu, for Theo, is the creation of employment. “My proudest moment was and continues to be being able to employ people. Although I was blessed enough to be able to go to school, travel the world and reap the benefits of having a job, I’d always go back home to the township and realise that this was not necessarily the case for my brothers and sisters who weren’t working at the time. I wanted to create something that could sustainably employ people, and at present, I employ 8 people, which I‘m extremely proud of. I didn’t just create something for myself, I created hope for others,” he says.
Established in 2015, the brand has reached considerable growth in a relatively short space of time. In that time, Theo Baloyi has grown all the wiser in the world of business. As such, he is in a position to offer advice to those entrepreneurs who are just starting out. “Profile is everything in business. Profile yourself before you diversify. If you’ve got a very good profile in business, and have built a reputable business, that’ll speak volumes about you,” he says.
Ultimately, Theo believes in the power of patience. “Patience should be applied to everything, whether you’re testing new models or trying new innovations or attempting to diversify,” he says. That patience has gotten Bathu to where it is now, and as the old saying goes, it’s only up from here.
Vital Stats
Featured entrepreneurs: Theo Baloyi
Key players: Theo Baloyi (Founder and CEO), Andrew Lale (Brand Manager)
Age: 28
Company name: Bathu
Year founded: 2015
Turnover: R5 million
Startup funding: R320 000