Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu

The Journey #

Growing up in Zenebework, one of Addis Ababa’s most marginalized neighborhoods, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu witnessed a devastating paradox throughout her childhood. Her neighbors possessed extraordinary artisan skills—hand-spinning, weaving, leatherwork—yet lived in chronic unemployment and extreme poverty. The disconnect between talent and opportunity would shape her entire entrepreneurial vision.

Embrace failure. No one created true awesomeness by being timid. Going big means you will fail, often. What you learn and apply from that failure though, will enable you to achieve greatness.

Her parents, both hospital workers, earned modest wages that made them relatively fortunate by community standards, though “food rations were lean, funds were leaner.” As the oldest of four siblings, Bethlehem watched her mother use an “inzert”—the traditional Ethiopian wooden hand drop spindle—passing down millennia-old hand-spinning techniques. She also observed the devastating effects of international humanitarian aid on her community. “I grew up in Ethiopia during the time of international humanitarian aid,” she later explained. “I witnessed the devastating effect that aid and charity had on the wider community, in terms of making people dependent.”

After completing her accounting degree from Unity University in 2004, Alemu worked briefly as an accountant while gaining experience in marketing, sales, and production at leather and apparel companies. But even before college, she had been thinking about “ways through which those artisans could benefit substantially from their skill.” Her breakthrough insight was simple yet revolutionary: Ethiopia had plenty of charity “brands” but not a single global brand of its own. The solution wasn’t more aid—it was building a business that could leverage existing artisan skills to compete in the global marketplace.

The $5,000 Gamble #

In early 2005, fresh out of college, Alemu quit her accounting job to launch SoleRebels. The reaction from those around her was immediate skepticism. “When I started soleRebels many people laughed and said I was crazy,” she recalls. “‘Your plan is to remake the barabasso into a global footwear brand leveraging the artisan talents in THAT community? What kind of business idea is that?’”

The startup capital came from family: approximately $5,000 pooled from her own savings and contributions from family and friends. Her grandmother bequeathed a plot of land in Zenebework where Alemu established her first workshop. She began with just five workers recruited from the local community—including leprosy survivors and others considered “unemployable”—paying them four to five times the minimum wage from day one.

The company name itself carried historical weight. SoleRebels references the Ethiopian rebel soldiers who wore handcrafted recycled tire sandals called “selate” and “barabasso” while fighting off Italian colonizers during the Battle of Adwa in 1896. The mission was ambitious: create the world’s first Fair Trade-certified footwear company using 100% local inputs—recycled car tires for soles, hand-spun organic cotton, Abyssinian hemp, koba plant fibers, and hand-loomed fabrics.

The Character Test: Two Years of 6-Kilogram Failures #

The first two years of SoleRebels were defined by a humbling technical failure that would have crushed most entrepreneurs. Alemu’s early prototypes were commercial disasters—each shoe weighed approximately 6 kilograms (over 13 pounds). The recycled tire soles, meant to be the brand’s signature innovation, were impossibly heavy because she hadn’t mastered how to cut the material properly.

“The shoes were really heavy, as I didn’t know how to cut the tire. They looked really funny,” Alemu admitted. “I kept trying and trying to develop the perfect product.”

For two years—2005 through 2007—she struggled to create viable footwear. The pressure was immense. She had hired workers from her community who depended on their jobs. Her family’s money was invested. The artisan model she believed in appeared fundamentally flawed. Yet she couldn’t mechanize or automate—that would betray the entire premise of creating dignified work for skilled craftspeople.

What makes this period especially significant is the psychological weight of community dependency. “I knew that there were so many talented people out there who could do great things if only given a chance,” Alemu later reflected. “However, due to extreme poverty, stigma, and marginalization… many of them could not even get simple jobs. This was devastating for me, as I had grown up with them. They were my neighbours, my family members.”

The breakthrough finally came when Alemu returned to traditional Ethiopian designs—the selate and barabasso shoes that had inspired SoleRebels from the beginning. By studying how generations of Ethiopian craftspeople had worked with tire rubber, she finally cracked the design challenge. The new prototypes were lightweight, comfortable, and commercially viable. The answer had been there all along; it just required the persistence to find it.

Building Global Credibility #

From 2005 to 2011, SoleRebels operated exclusively as a wholesale business, supplying online retailers rather than opening its own stores. This patient approach allowed Alemu to refine operations, build production capacity, and establish credibility with major partners including Amazon, Urban Outfitters, Whole Foods, and Endless.com.

The company became the world’s first WFTO (World Fair Trade Organization) certified footwear company—a distinction that validated its ethical business model. Fair Trade certification wasn’t just a marketing badge; SoleRebels paid wages over 233% higher than industry average, provided medical insurance and transportation, and employed marginalized groups including leprosy survivors.

By 2011, SoleRebels had grown to approximately 90 employees and reached $2 million in annual sales. That year, Alemu achieved a significant milestone by opening SoleRebels’ first standalone retail store in Addis Ababa, pivoting from wholesale to direct retail. She was no longer content supplying other people’s stores—she wanted to build a global retail empire.

The awards followed rapidly: World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2011, Forbes’ 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa, and first female African entrepreneur to address the Clinton Global Initiative. International expansion accelerated with stores opening in Taiwan and Vienna (2012), Barcelona (2013), Singapore (2014), and Silicon Valley (October 2014). By 2016, SoleRebels was producing 125,000 pairs annually and distributing to 45 countries through a combination of standalone stores and retail partnerships.

Beyond Footwear: The 100,000-Job Ecosystem #

SoleRebels’ success validated a broader approach—authentic “Origin Trade” beats commodity exports—which Alemu applied across multiple sectors. In 2016-2017, she launched Garden of Coffee, applying the same artisan-first principles to Ethiopia’s coffee industry. As the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia had been supplying the world with raw green beans for centuries—but had never built a global brand around locally roasted specialty coffee.

“I began Garden of Coffee so that people everywhere can experience the magic of hand-roasted Ethiopian coffees, roasted at their source by Ethiopia’s finest coffee artisans,” Alemu explained. The company’s “Origin Trade” model keeps all value-added processing—roasting, packaging, branding—in Ethiopia rather than exporting raw materials for processing elsewhere. In August 2019, Garden of Coffee was named “#1 Value Added Coffee Exporter” by the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority.

The 100,000+ jobs figure associated with Alemu comes from Made By Ethiopia, a public-private partnership she founded with the Ethiopian Ministry of Industry through her consulting firm Perimeter Consulting. Made By Ethiopia connects global footwear brands with Ethiopian manufacturers, attracting companies like ALDO, Caleres, and Under Armour to source from Ethiopia. The initiative encompasses the entire footwear and leather sector—not SoleRebels alone—and includes factory jobs, tannery work, logistics, and supply chain employment.

Her portfolio continues expanding: Selam Bank (a $116 million mortgage bank launched in 2021), TeffTastic (teff-based snacks named among Top 6 Snack Trends of 2021), GIZA Digital (payment platform), and The Republic of Leather (luxury leather goods). Recent recognition includes induction into the JA Worldwide Global Business Hall of Fame in 2022 and appointment as Co-Chair of the G20 Action Council on African Economic Integration in February 2023.

Last updated: January 15, 2026