We are all familiar with the story of the genesis of many conglomerates: they started from humble beginnings when the founder was tinkering in a garage and grew to become a household name.

The story behind Walk Fresh, a sneaker cleaning business and manufacturer of shoe care detergents, is equally intriguing. It can be traced back to a budget of R700 in petrol savings for the month that its founder, Lethabo Mokoena (34), sacrificed to purchase cleaning detergents after he had a bulb moment of monetising a sneaker cleaning business in his hometown of Daveyton, east of Johannesburg.

“I was hanging out with the guys one afternoon after work when I saw one of my childhood friends cleaning his mother’s suede sneakers. I enquired why he didn’t formalise the business and realised there and then, that I may be on to something. I was so caught up with the idea that I gave up the money I had put aside for petrol for the month and bought cleaning detergents and used the rest to buy a monthly train ticket to commute to work,” Mokoena recalls fondly.

As starry-eyed as the story may sound, Mokoena is quick to point out that his entrepreneurship journey which kicked off as a sneaker cleaning venture and branched out to include detergent formulation and retail, was not all beer and skittles.

“In the first month of the business, we managed to clean about thirty pairs of sneakers, and I halted the operation because I wanted to conduct a market survey and develop a brand strategy. The business was officially launched in June on my graduation day, an occasion where I would normally be the centre of attention. Apart from graduation day, there is no other day where one gets to be the centre of attention other than your own wedding,” he quips.

It has been an adrenaline-fuelled ride for Mokoena, a BA degree graduate in Corporate Communications from the University of Johannesburg. The dynamic entrepreneur recalls that he juggled three jobs while on campus to fund his way through his studies after his uncle’s funding for his education got depleted.

“By the time I graduated I had already been accustomed to managing my time by juggling three jobs. Working as an intern copywriter and a strategist in one of the leading advertising agencies, I was frustrated being confined to one desk the whole day. So, when the opportunity came to diversify my interests, I took it head on,” he says.

Mokoena describes the formative years of his business as the most “excruciating” time as he had to scale up a service orientated business while consistently maintaining quality. “There was no blueprint, no one I could ask advice from, there was no precedent,” he says. His big break occurred in 2016 when he was approached by J&B Hive in Braamfontein who were impressed by his social media profile and raving customer reviews on social media. “They enquired about the support that I required, and I told them that I needed a shop as the bedroom where we stored the sneakers was packed to the rafters. They agreed to fund the shop and I opted for a customised container which we set up in Daveyton in 2017. The J&B Hive was so impressed with the success of our operations that they offered to fund a second shop a year later,” Mokoena recalls.

He says the opportunity to open a second store presented him with the option to branch out of Daveyton and service customers in Soweto where his business was getting a lot of orders. The foray into Soweto made business sense as it meant that he would negate the high operational costs his business was incurring in pickups and deliveries. In the same year, Sportscene, a popular retailer that specialises in sportswear and footwear, approached him to lend his expertise to their customers who bemoaned the absence of suitable sneaker cleaning solutions in the market. Both parties agreed that to utilise Sportscene’s enterprise and supplier development (ESD) program to establish a Walk Fresh kiosk inside the Sportscene store in Sandton City where customers will be offered a value-added service of sneaker cleaning and restoration.

“This was a big jump for Walk Fresh. At the age of 26 I found myself managing three stores in Daveyton, Soweto and Sandton, overseeing three teams and three payrolls. In addition to this, TFG, the proprietors of Sportscene, also requested me to open another store in Canal Walk in Cape Town. In hindsight, the rapid expansion in such a small space of time was suicide. I blame this on the naivety of youth. I had no prior training, no one could advise me on what I was doing, the momentum was hectic, and we had immense pressure to keep it up, no one prepared me mentally for this growth burst and I was not present in any social events, be it weddings, baby showers or funerals. Walk Fresh was my life.”

Mokoena has also demonstrated his social entrepreneur side throughout his journey. He started a business incubation programme called Sole Survivors where he teaches young people, particularly those in the sneaker cleaning business, entrepreneurial skills such as managing finances and customer service.

“As black graduates, we always lament about the state of our education system, but nobody is doing anything to change the narrative. It’s easy to be an activist until it’s time to be active. We started Sole Survivors and built our own programme in our own language. We don’t want to teach entrepreneurs about foreign concepts such as value proposition and risk mitigation, we teach them about customer service, problem solving, managing finances, and all the practical things that we learnt as we were building Walk Fresh. Through Sole Survivor, we are building a pipeline of entrepreneurs and we use this initiative to empower and sell Walk Fresh manufactured detergents to a captive audience,” he explains. 

Expansion into detergent manufacturing space

Mokoena’s dedication to Walk Fresh did not go unnoticed. His face became emblazoned in magazines and his feats as a young entrepreneur were documented in mainstream and social media. He was named one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans in 2022 and scooped the coveted South African Youth Awards Entrepreneurship top prize.

In addition to the sneaker cleaning business, Walk Fresh started dabbling in detergent manufacturing and retailing in the third year of its operations. Mokoena says the decision was informed by the absence of bulk cleaning solutions in the market and the need to expand across the value chain of the sneaker cleaning business.

This decision ties in with the projections by Business Research Insights which estimated the global sneaker care service market to reach $4.92 billion in 2025 and projected to grow to $6.43 billion by 2033, with a compound annual growth rate of 3% during the forecast period.

Mokoena recalls that together with his childhood friend who is a chemical engineer, they started experimenting with different formulations and testing PH levels to develop a customised and biodegradable solution that will be suitable for different sneaker textures, be it nubuck, canvas, leather or suede.

“It took us three months to get the formulation detergent and three years to get it right. We were not inventing anything new, but merely improving on existing products and addressing the shortcomings of available solutions in the market that did not cater for bulk cleaning. We went on to develop a specialised solution for cleaning white sneakers. We were so confident of this detergent that we ran a hugely successful campaign where we challenged our customers to bring the dirtiest white sneakers for cleaning and promising them a full refund should we be unable to remove the stains,” he says.

Mokoena brims with confidence about the detergent manufacturing business and believes that this is the direction that Walk Fresh is pivoting to. This is understandable considering that the margins from the sale of these detergents to fellow sneaker businesses is nothing to be sneered at. In the last financial year, Mokoena reveals that Walk Fresh generated over R400 000 from detergent sales alone, minus revenue from the four shops.

Mokoena revealed that the commercial for the detergents has just been finalised and Walk Fresh will launch the products officially in partnership with Proudly South African. These products will be available on the shelves of leading retail stores.

The big sink

The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 was a wakeup call for Walk Fresh. He recalls that the Soweto store was bleeding money and the operation was ill-equipped to venture into the country’s most populous township hence a decision was taken to close the store.

The business recovered when the lockdown regulations were eased, but the deaths of Mokoena’s business partner, his uncle and childhood friend in a space of three months became too much to bear for this spirited entrepreneur. “These incidents triggered something in me, and I tanked. I have been running frantically from one thing to the next and I didn’t have time to myself. My ambition never gave me an opportunity to enjoy and appreciate what I was building because I was always thinking of what’s next. I had burnt out every ounce of energy I had left, and I had to slow down. I admitted myself to a psychiatric ward for a month and was referred to a silent retreat for 10 days. It was time for introspection and to recuperate,” he recalls.

Mokoena says he managed to get back on his feet and rekindled his relationship with his family as he was away for a prolonged period setting up the store in Cape Town. In the middle of 2024, Walk Fresh opened an independent store in Alberton (Lemon Tree Shopping Center). As he looks back on the journey travelled, Mokoena says it’s time that he focuses on the most important things and start a family. 

“After 10 years in business, Walk Fresh has done all we could possibly do from a service perspective. There is no sneaker we haven’t cleaned and no brand we haven’t worked with on activations. The question for me is how do we pivot and show for the 10 years we’ve been in business? We have accepted that we can’t clean all the sneakers in the country, but there is something we can do to get the brand inside every household in South Africa and that’s where we are now and that’s why we are launching the product. We envisage to put on the shelves of major retailers because no one knows how to clean sneakers better than us, so it only makes sense that you buy the product from us,” he concludes.