Tunisia: Making Shoes, Creating Jobs
Through the INVEST initiative, USAID partnered with CrossBoundary — a transaction advisor operating in frontier markets — to help Tunisian companies access the financing they need to grow and reach their potential. CrossBoundary helped Soprotic build a business plan, an investment memo in English and French, an investment teaser, business forecasts, and budgets. These materials were valuable in conversations with private equity funds, banks, and other investors.
By Kristin Kelly Jangraw, INVEST Communications Director
Lassaad Slama has been manufacturing shoes in Tunis since 1991. As the CEO of the Tunisian shoe manufacturer Soprotic, he is proud of the craftsmanship he can deliver. Some of the world’s most famous luxury shoe brands are his clients. But his staff are an even greater source of satisfaction. In his office, Slama points out the first sneaker the company made, signed by the company’s founding employees in 1991. It is a point of pride that some are still working with the company decades later.
Today, Slama has about 425 Tunisian employees, most of whom are women. “We recruit young people and we train them, because here in the surrounding area, there is no training center or education for this kind of activity,” he says. “Then some of the trainees have progressed to team leaders, and we try to really keep the best ones. Soprotic pays more than the average for the industry, and we favor internal promotion instead of recruiting from the outside.”
For the past few years, Slama has wanted to upgrade the factory. He needs a larger, better-equipped training room, since the company’s training program is critical to its culture and success. He wants a larger, nicer staff room for people to take breaks. And he wants to make his factory greener and more sustainable, enabling him to meet the standards and certifications that some new clients would require.
While he was able to purchase land for a new facility in 2019, Slama ran into difficulty getting the financing he needed to build the new factory on it. Tunisian banks are very conservative, and he needed to look elsewhere to finance his growth.
Through an association of business owners, he heard that USAID’s Mission in Tunisia was helping companies secure private investment. USAID and its partner CrossBoundary helped Slama develop the materials he needed to attract investors — like a pitch deck and a business plan. He recently secured $4.3 million in private investment for a new manufacturing facility.The new location will make many more shoes, of course. It will also create hundreds of good jobs in an area that needs them.
In addition, the new factory will be environmentally sustainable. “One of the objectives is to have a hundred percent of the electricity need covered by photovoltaic panels, and there will be a system to recycle rainwater,” says Slama. He also hopes to implement selective recycling in the manufacturing process, for example, using scrap leather to make footbeds. And it will have more space and nicer facilities for staff, making it an even better place to work.
Partnering with USAID at the right moment is making it possible for Soprotic to reach its potential, create good jobs in Tunisia, and make its operations more sustainable. We look forward to seeing what the company can achieve in the future.
