#WoolworthsYouthMakers2026: The sneaker care brand that started on a Daveyton stoep

Walk Fresh is a Proudly SA business. Source: Supplied.

Growing national footprint

For generations, shoe care was an informal skill passed around homes and neighbourhoods. Lethabo Mokoena looked at that familiar township hustle and saw a business that deserved a place in the mainstream.

Today, Walk Fresh has cleaned and restored more than 200,000 pairs of sneakers and operates from six locations, including stores inside Sportscene at Sandton City and Canal Walk. Over the coming weeks, the company's footwear care products will also be showcased in selected Woolworths stores as part of the retailer's Youth Makers programme.

The early days of Walk Fresh.

"Walk Fresh started from a simple observation," Mokoena says. "In 2015, while hanging out with friends at our local shopping centre, I watched one of them cleaning his mother's shoes. It struck me that people were spending thousands of rand on sneakers, yet once they became dirty there was no trusted, professional solution to restore them."

At the time, sneaker culture in South Africa was booming. Collectors queued for limited releases, resale prices climbed and premium footwear became status symbols. But caring for those expensive purchases was often an afterthought. Most people cleaned their sneakers themselves or accepted that once they were dirty, they would never quite look the same again.

Mokoena believed there was another way.

"With many of my childhood friends unemployed, I saw an opportunity to build a business that could create meaningful employment in my community while giving customers' footwear the same level of professional care that people already expected for their cars and clothing."

Experimentation and trust

The business started small, operating from a stoep in Daveyton, where every customer represented an opportunity to prove that professional sneaker care wasn't a gimmick but a worthwhile investment.

"The early days were built on experimentation, learning and resilience," he says. "Every customer taught us something about sneaker materials, service standards and what people valued. We did not have a blueprint because the industry did not really exist locally."

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Building the business meant building trust.

"Education was everything. We had to demonstrate the value before asking people to believe in it. We shared before-and-after transformations, explained our cleaning process, invested in customer service and focused on delivering exceptional results consistently."

Word spread and trust was earned one pair at a time.

"Every satisfied customer became an ambassador for the brand; social media and word of mouth played a massive role in our growth. Over time, professional sneaker care shifted from being seen as a luxury to becoming an investment in protecting footwear."

As customer demand grew, so did Walk Fresh's ambitions.

"The turning point came when customers stopped seeing us as a cleaning service and started trusting us with some of their most valuable sneakers. We realised we were not simply cleaning shoes. We were preserving products people cared deeply about. That changed our thinking from operating a service business to building a scalable consumer brand."

Being inside Sportscene also changed when customers encountered the brand.

"Sportscene has always been at the centre of sneaker culture in South Africa, so it felt like a natural partnership. We both serve customers who genuinely value their footwear."

"Someone can purchase a new pair and immediately discover how to care for it properly throughout its lifetime. It has helped position Walk Fresh as an extension of the sneaker ownership experience rather than simply a cleaning service."

Validation

"Being selected as a Woolworths Youth Maker was an incredible honour," Mokoena says. "Personally, it was a reminder that the years of persistence, setbacks and continuous improvement have been worthwhile."

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It also validated the work behind expanding beyond sneaker cleaning.

"Professionally, it validated the work our entire team has put into building quality products alongside our service offering. It has also given us an opportunity to introduce Walk Fresh to a much broader audience and demonstrate that South African entrepreneurs can build innovative consumer brands with international potential."

That evolution is only just beginning.

"We are evolving from being known primarily as a sneaker laundry into South Africa's leading footwear care company," Mokoena says. "That means expanding our retail footprint, growing our product range, strengthening wholesale and strategic partnerships, and making professional footwear care more accessible across the country."

Growth, however, forced Mokoena to rethink what success looked like.

"One of the biggest lessons has been recognising that building a brand and building an organisation are two very different things," he says.

"In the beginning, I believed working harder would solve most problems. Today I understand that sustainable growth comes from building capable people, creating strong systems and making decisions that support the long-term vision rather than short-term wins."

Leadership

That shift has shaped everything from how Walk Fresh trains its teams to how it expands into new locations. Rather than relying on the founder to maintain standards, the company has focused on creating systems that deliver the same customer experience whether a pair of sneakers is dropped off in Johannesburg or Cape Town.

"Leadership has become less about doing everything myself and more about empowering others to succeed."

Ultimately, the brand being what people think of when talking about sneaker culture in South Africa is the dream.

"Our ambition is simple but significant: when people think about caring for their shoes, we want Walk Fresh to be the first brand that comes to mind."