The Heroin Behind soleRebels

Her name is Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu - the visionary founder and Managing Director of soleRebels (Bostex PLC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  

It all started from a small workshop, which has now grown into Africa’s fastest-growing footwear company, known for its eco-friendly and artisan-crafted shoes. 

soleRebels has now been expanded globally, with distribution in over 30 countries, and has also been recognized for promoting sustainable development and creating employment opportunities in Ethiopia. 

For Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu at soleRebels, creating great footwear is also a means of creating hope.

This Concept Behind soleRebels:

soleRebels began in 2004 as an idea: to create jobs for Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu's community, Zenabwork, a small village in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Having grown up watching her family and neighbors struggling, she decided to create a “better life” they were all waiting for by harnessing her community’s incredible artisan skills and channeling them into a sustainable, global, fair trade footwear business. She has done that and more and she is proud to say that the soleRebels brand is being enjoyed by people in over 30 countries around the world.

She chose shoes entrepreneurship because she saw that footwear was an excellent platform to begin to share many of the indigenous eco-sensible craft heritages and artisan talents that they have in Ethiopia with the world.

It also meant that based on the approach they took to footwear creation – that being hand crafted and eco-sensible – they could source and make shoes from their local materials, thereby creating export products from 100% local materials.

This allowed them to riff, recreate, and re-imagine the traditional “selate” and “barabasso” shoes, a recycled car tire soled shoe that has existed in Ethiopia for a LONG time (in fact, it was THE footwear from back in the day when the ORIGINAL “soleRebels” fought off the invading forces and kept Ethiopia as the only African nation to never be colonized!).

She took this wonderful indigenous age-old recycling tradition and fused it with fantastic Ethiopian artisan crafts and excellent modern design sensibilities and turned it into footwear that has universal flavor + appeal that is now a market beating export brand being enjoyed by people around the globe!!!!

She carry on that original riff everyday growing the styles, the product range, the quality and the brand. soleRebels features collections of superFresh, comfy + cool sandals, flip flops and shoes featuring recycled car tire soles and an array of recycled and sustainable ingredients like hand spun + hand loomed organic fabrics and a pallete of unique natural fibers including organic pure abyssinian jutes and PURE Abyssinian KOBA.

"Help others and be proud that you are making the world a better place. one step at a time. and really, what more could you ask from your shoes."

                                         - Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu