In 2008, fresh out of college, Liz Bohnannon moved to Uganda in hopes of making a difference for women and their lack of opportunity and funding for education. Instead of creating a charity for the women in poverty, Bohannon wanted to make a long term difference; teaching women life skills and how to survive on their own. After several ideas and attempts of creating products and systems to help the women, Sseko Designs was born.
After creating a final prototype of the Sseko Sandal, Liz and her husband moved back to the United States, hopeful to sell their sandals to boutique owners. Each Sseko Sandal included a pair of bases and a set of ribbons allowing customers to tie and style the shoes in hundreds of different ways.
In February, Sseko was featured on ABC’s Shark Tank. “Unsuccessful”, Liz and her husband left the show with no support from the the Sharks, being told that their company mentality was crazy and essentially would not work.
The opposite happened. After being on the show, the company grew tremendously. One Sseko woman responded to the Sharks by saying “We don’t need that rich Mizungu (white man) to succeed. We’re team Sseko. We’ll do it without him.” Since Sseko began, the company has grown from three to forty seven employees. A new workshop was built, five times larger than the first, and forty two women have since gone through University. Sseko women also receive seventeen different educational classes while working including family planning, first aid, budgeting,and interview skills. Sseko has gone from one product line to five, and now also has 350 retailers around the world. In addition to being featured on Shark Tank, Bohnanon and the Sseko label has been covered by Fox Business, Vogue, The Huffington Post, People magazine and several others.
http://ssekodesigns.com/
Kellie, I’ve seen people wearing these around school! They are so adorable! I had no idea that every purchase goes toward supporting women that need it most. That definitely makes me want to buy them even more!
Thanks so much for sharing this!! I love Sskeko Designs because they not only created a unique, useful, and stylish product, but they are also using it for a greater cause than simply making money.
I love that this company employs and trains women in Uganda. They take the model of social entrepreneurship to a whole new level. Tom’s Shoes gives products away to people in third world countries, but this business is empowerment. It is so cool to see the embodiment of the old proverb, “Feed a man a fish and he will eat for a day; but teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”
I love the idea of making a product that is truly a charity. Especially in a society where we are constantly consuming, it is nice to see a company that is created to take advantage of this and at the same time give to those in need.
This is such a great example of how passion drives a product over monetary means or sustainability. I love the creativity they brought into helping these women out through giving them a new skill rather than just giving them money or food which are temporary fixes. I took a trip to Uganda last summer and saw some similar organizations at work giving people the opportunity to use their hands for productive causes, earning honest money which ends up boosting moral of the entire community. I think this is a great example of how profits are driven by where consumers see a need. Sseko met a need of society while helping others at the same time which is a beautiful thing.